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THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
COMMON SENSE 



BY 

FREDERIC HARRISON 



Nefo gork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1907 

All rights reserved 



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PREFATORY NOTE 

The present volume, being the second in a series of 
collected studies, is a companion to The Creed of a 
Layman, published in April 1907. It is designed to form 
a summary of the philosophical grounds on which the 
preceding work was based; and it carries on the auto- 
biographical account of the stages by which the author 
reached those conclusions. Most of the Essays were 
papers read at the Metaphysical Society between the years 
1 87 1 and 1880, or were founded on discussions that had 
taken place there. The whole of the Introduction and 
the Essays numbered iii. iv. vii. viii. x. xi. xvi. xxiii. (about 
one-third of the volume) are either new, or have been 
published only in the small organ of the Positivist Society 
of Clifford's Inn. The remaining Essays were published 
in the Fortnightly Reviewbetween the years 1870 and 1892, 
and in the Nineteenth Century between 1877 and 1886, and 
the author desires to express his thanks to the proprietors 
of those publications for their courteous permission to 
allow the re-issue. As these pieces have long ceased to 
be current, it is believed that the contents of this volume 
will be found to be practically new to the modern reader 



VI PREFATORY NOTE 

as well as to the younger students of philosophy. And 
the writer now in his old age submits to all who are seek- 
ing some sound basis of life Thoughts formed in his 
maturity after exhaustive discussions with some of the 
first thinkers of our time. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION ix 

ESSAY 

I. On the Supposed Necessity of Certain Meta- 

physical Problems i 

II. The Subjective Synthesis 21 

III. Synthesis 42 

IV. The Three Great Syntheses 46 

V. The Human Synthesis 63 

VI. Lewes' Problems of Life and Mind ... 98 
VII. The Social Factor in Psychology . . .118 

VIII. The Absolute 126 

IX. The Basis of Morals 137 

X. The Ethical Conference 152 

XI. Natural Theology 159 

XII. Law of the Three States 170 

XIII. The Soul before and after Death . . .184 

XIV. Heaven 196 

XV. Reply to Criticisms 225 

XVI. The Future of Agnosticism 249 

XVII. Mr. Huxley's Controversies 268 

XVIII. Mr. Huxley's Ironicon ...... 300 

XIX. Mr. A. Balfour's Foundations of Belief . . 314 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

ESSAY PAGE 

XX. Harriet Martineau's Positive Philosophy . . 325 

XXI. The Ghost of Religion 333 

XXII. Agnostic Metaphysics 352 

XXIII." Science and Humanity 393 

What Religion Means ...... 395 

The Problem of Life ....... 404 

Free Thought versus Faith 411 

Solution of the Dilemma 413 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

The function of Philosophy is to form the foundation of Morals, 
Politics, and Religion. It is not an end in itself: it is 
the indispensable means of reaching an end otherwise un- 
attainable. — Professor Levy-Bruhl, after Comte. 

INTRODUCTION 

In a former book — The Creed of a Layman — I set forth 
the grounds on which I had found peace in a religion of 
Common Sense — the silent, it may be, unconscious, and 
too often the unavowed faith of many good and sensible 
men. I shall now endeavour to show the intellectual basis 
on which such a faith is grounded ; and this I venture to de- 
scribe as The Philosophy of Common Sense. Rational 
Philosophy indeed, from the time of the early Greek sages 
down to Auguste Comte, has never been anything but the 
Common Sense of the best minds systematised and corre- 
lated to a righteous life. For some sixty years I have studied 
competing systems of Philosophy, finding some truths and 
much verbiage in all. And long ago I came to see that 
philosophy, like Religion, is much more simple, more practi- 
cal, closer to a strenuous life on earth, than philosophers are 
thought to admit. 

At the outset a question may be asked — Why should we 
trouble about Philosophy at all? What good will it do us? 
Is it not to waste time on a superfluity of Culture? No 
mistake could be greater — and indeed more dangerous. All 
sane and serious men have some general ideas which lie at 



X PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

the back of their brains, whether they are conscious of them 
or not, whether they ever reduce them to formal proposi- 
tions, or suffer them silently to influence their lives. This 
is their philosophy. 

Consistent and efficient conduct is impossible without 
some settled cast of the mind. Many may never have heard 
of "Differentiation," "The Categorical Imperative," "Mon- 
ism," or "Pragmatism." But they do believe in certain 
dominant ideas; and these in the long run determine their 
conduct. Idle fribbles perhaps, and men and women who 
have no mind of their own in anything, but are the docile 
slaves of circumstance, whim, or stronger natures, can hardly 
be said to have any philosophy, as they can hardly be said 
to have either mind of their own or will of their own. But 
even they are dominated by the philosophy of those around 
them. 

In this age, when orthodox doctrines are melting away, a 
dangerous sophism is coming into fashion that religion is 
entirely a matter of feeling, not of understanding; so that, 
when the dogmas of the Gospel are found to fail, Christians 
are told that faith has no need of creed, that holy emotions 
constitute a working religion, without any substratum of 
positive belief. This is in truth the very dry-rot of religion 
in senile decay. Every form of religion worth the name, 
Theocracy, Judaism, Polytheism, Christianity, Romanism, 
Puritanism, Islam, Unitarianism, even modern Theism — all 
have rested upon a definite, coherent body of doctrine. 

For ages this has been the solid power of the Catholic 
Church; and Rome, at any rate, holds to this still. A 
religion of bare emotion rapidly degenerates into gross ex- 
travagances, and even foul abuses. The fanatics of the 
Middle Ages — Flagellants, Anabaptists, Mystics, like Anti- 
nomians, Shakers, Dukhobors, Mormons, and Revivalists — 



INTRODUCTION xi 

threw over rational doctrines and flung themselves upon the 
storm-driven sea of pious zeal. Oriental and African zealots 
often drifted into ghastly excesses under the influence of 
irrational emotions. No religion can guide or purify man's 
life unless it rest upon a solid bed of assured convictions. It 
would be a wretched apology for the latter days of the Gospel 
that it has no need of reason for the faith that is in it. 

Efficient religion implies a corresponding philosophy of 
the World and of Alan. Not indeed a Metaphysic of Being, 
a Canon of Reality and Truth, nor an Analysis of Conscious- 
ness and the like ! But behind every serious and practical 
mode of religion there must rest, in a more or less conscious 
form, an intelligible view of the relation of mankind to the 
world of Nature and Humanity around us, some overmaster- 
ing source of Duty, some ground of Hope, some object of 
Reverence. 

To have no ideal of Reverence, Hope, or Duty, to have 
no sense of relation to Things or Persons around the indi- 
vidual (even as an unconscious habit of mind) — this is to 
be without any religion. And all the yearning in the world 
and all possible fervour of spirit, devoid of reasonable belief, 
can end in nothing but constant change and spiritual con- 
fusion. The Philosophy may be nothing but an alembic 
wherein is distilled solid good sense. But no religion can 
work for good or endure for a generation unless, as its base 
and backbone, it hold some theory of the World it has to 
live in and the Fellowmen it has to work with. 

In the present book I seek to trace how I came by degrees 
to solve the main problems of Thought, as in a former book 
I sought to trace the same evolution in problems of Religion. 
I can promise the reader that I will trouble him with no 
hard words, psychological enigmas, or double acrostics in 
dog- Greek. Metaphysics tend more and more to be carried 



xii PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

on in the Unknown Tongues vouchsafed to the elect which 
require years and years of study to master. The modern 
Metaphysical Tongue is far more bewildering to the un- 
learned than either Esperanto or Volapiik. In fact Meta- 
physics are mainly kept alive by the internecine war of the 
rival Esperantists and Volapiikians of Philosophy to obtain 
recognition of their respective jargon. The so-called science 
of Metaphysics resembles an elaborate geography of an 
imaginary and invisible planet, described in an artificial 
language which no one but the geographer himself can apply. 
The result of these Nibelungen combats, wherein hero slays 
hero in some legendary world, is too often the dying sigh 
of Hegel — that he had but one disciple who understood 
him — and he misunderstood him. 

I must guard my words against being misunderstood my- 
self. I know that Metaphysics have absorbed many of the 
most profound minds that Humanity can boast. I recognise 
the imperishable value of their labours. I admit that meta- 
physicians, even of these latter days, exhibit extraordinary 
subtlety and intellectual power. I agree with them that no 
man can pretend to speak about philosophy at all unless he 
has done his best to master the vast evolution of Metaphysical 
Thought. I have done this; and over a long life of study 
I have followed this most fascinating form of the higher 
meditation. 

I claim to have mastered the cryptic, but perhaps indis- 
pensable, language in which these subtle theories have to be 
cast. I claim to have understood these philosophers; I am 
not blind to their marvellous ingenuity, their heroic patience, 
their noble detachment from grosser claims. And knowing 
as I do the impulse in us to face these primordial problems, 
having given years of life to get to the bottom of these inter- 
minable answers to the eternal riddles, acknowledging, as I 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

must, the invaluable service to mankind both of the problems 
and of the answers, I affirm that the mass of what is called 
Metaphysics is the fruitless search after insoluble puzzles : a 
search which it is wise to understand as an intellectual gym- 
nastic, but whereon nothing practical, real, or true can be 
built. 

The word Metaphysics, like almost every word used in 
this study, is sO elastic that I must define the sense in which 
I use it here. It includes Ontology, i.e. the knowledge of 
abstract Being, of Things-in-themselves, of the Real sub- 
stratum of the Universe, of the Absolute Existence which 
does, or may, lie behind the sum of Appearance known 
through the human senses to our conceptions. We say that 
the search, which for thousands of years has occupied some 
of the acutest of human brains, has led to nothing and can 
lead to nothing for reasons which sound Philosophy explains. 

Under Metaphysics I include the ultimate analysis of Con- 
sciousness, the ultimate explanation of the relations of Mind 
and Matter, and the absolute form of either. I include also 
the search into First Cause, Final Causes, or the abstract 
meaning of Cause. In Metaphysics I include the relation of 
human consciousness to some imagined Universal Conscious- 
ness. I include the search into some imagined substance 
underlying and over-reaching Life — call it Soul or anything 
of the kind. Lastly, in Metaphysical impotence we include 
the abysmal problem of Freedom and Necessity. Sound 
Philosophy will seek to measure the enormous volume of 
high intelligence that has been exhausted on all these sub- 
jects, and then will pass on to practical Knowledge, as it 
passed on from the Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of Life. 

But sound Philosophy of course does include a rational 
Psychology, the Laws of Thought, the analysis of the Mental 
processes, Logic, and the Organum of reasoning and demon- 



xiv PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

stration. It does include a system to explain the practical 
relations of man to the outer world, of man to his fellowmen, 
of the evolution of life and of society. But it refuses to be 
labelled under Materialism, or Monism, or Agnosticism, or 
Phenomenalism, Realism, Idealism, Panlogism, or Pragma- 
tism. All of these are more or less abortive attempts to 
solve insoluble problems. 

Sound Philosophy has tested a thousand answers. It finds 
them all equally idle. It does not attempt to show they are 
false. It admits that they are wonderful feats of building 
without bricks, or rather of building with mere clouds. They 
might all be true, if indeed there be a world wherein out of 
clouds we may fashion "the gorgeous palaces, the solemn 
temples, the great globe itself." Philosophic good sense 
watches this insubstantial pageant fade, this baseless vision 
dissolve, and leave not a rack behind. 

To repudiate Metaphysics is not to disparage the pro- 
found achievements of abstract thinkers, ancient and modern, 
or the canons of a systematic First Philosophy. Plato, Aris- 
totle, and their successors in antiquity, Bacon, Descartes, 
Leibnitz, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel — all 
profoundly modified the thought of the world, and each has 
given us imperishable truths. So far as Positivism is con- 
cerned, all of these men are commemorated in the Calendar 
of Great Men, and have been duly honoured by Comte. 
Some of them undoubtedly are classed as Metaphysicians, 
and all of them have laid down as truths much that no one 
to-day can accept. But the rare value of much that they 
taught, and the necessity for understanding what they did 
teach, even for study of their very extravagances and errors, 
is what no rational student of philosophy can dispute. Their 
very failures are more illuminating than the accepted truisms 
of lesser men. 



INTRODUCTION XV 

In the permanent residuum of truth left by the specula- 
tions of these great thinkers, and in the entire history of 
Metaphysics from Plato to Mr. Arthur Balfour, there is one 
profound lesson, one and the same Constant amid a thousand 
Variables. That truth is the Limitation of the Human 
Mind. There is no paradox in recognising the achievements 
of metaphysical thinkers, even in admitting the indispensable 
nature of their work, if we mean that the fundamental lesson 
of Philosophy is the knowledge of what the Mind can do, 
and what it cannot do. That essential condition underlies 
all serious thinking, and is really decisive both in Theology 
and in Philosophy ; for from the very dawn of religion as a 
system of beliefs, Theology has been inextricably associated 
with these ontological problems. 

Theology has ever lived upon them, and still lives on them 
to-day. And it has needed ages of intense meditation and 
the waste of consummate intellects to convince us that the 
quest must be abandoned as hopeless, mischievous, irra- 
tional. Philosophic Thought could not become truly rational 
until it had solved the problem of the real laws of the think- 
ing Mind. Religion could not face the modern world until 
it had freed itself from the insoluble problem of the Quest of 
the Holy Grail it had long so passionately sought. 

The note of every original work of Metaphysics is to 
correct, qualify, discredit its predecessors. Its criticisms 
are so convincing that we wonder how the older theory ever 
held its ground. The critic triumphs like a "strong man 
armed," until "a stronger than he shall come upon him and 
take from him all his armour wherein he trusted." Take 
any Metaphysical treatise which reviews the labours of its 
predecessors, it matters not from which sect or school, the 
strength of it lies in its refutation of preceding doctrines. 
Take any text-book on the history of speculative philosophy, 



xvi PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

such as those of Zeller, Kuno Fischer, or Lewes, or such 
excellent summaries of Metaphysics as those in the old and 
new Encyclopedia Britannica, by the former Master of 
Balliol College, and by the present President of Corpus 
College, in Oxford. Turn to the latest general History of 
Philosophy, by Arch. B. D. Alexander, Glasgow, 1907. The 
story, even in impartial hands, is one long tale of error, 
failure, confusion, and uncertainty. Professor Case's essay, 
full of learning, judgment, acuteness, as it is, ends with a 
hope that we may "pass through the anarchy of modern 
metaphysics," and in the future discover some answer to the 
great questions. With philosophic courage, one after an- 
other, the Metaphysician walks up to the Eternal Sphinx, 
though he sees round her the whitened bones of those who 
have gone before him. Why hope? Why ask? Why not 
turn aside — to some useful and less depressing search ? 

It has been well said that Metaphysics is "the prolonged 
impotence of two thousand years." Science, like other solid 
achievements of the human intellect, advances from step to 
step, from generation to generation, ever building anew on 
the assured foundation of previous discoveries. It does not 
constantly hark back to the earliest theorems of Copernicus, 
Galileo, or Harvey. But the Ontologist and the Panlogist 
is for starting afresh with the data of Plato, Descartes, or 
Spinoza; and his greatest triumph is to prove how all his 
predecessors were wrong. The supreme result of two thou- 
sand years of debate is stated in a recent work to be "the 
potentiality of self-realisation eternally inherent in the world- 
principle." If we do not accept this dogma, if we even 
confess that we see no meaning in it, we are told that we 
are old-fashioned and not up to the high level of modern 
thought. 

For my part I am so old-fashioned as to agree with Thomas 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

Carlyle when so long ago as the year in which I was born he 
wrote : — 

" The disease of Metaphysics is a perennial one." " It is a 
chronic malady that of Metaphysics, and perpetually recurs on 
us." " There is no more fruitless endeavour than this same, which 
the Metaphysician proper toils in: to educe Conviction out of 
Negation. How, by merely testing and rejecting what is not, shall 
we ever attain knowledge of what is ? . . . Consider it well, Meta- 
physics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the mind; to en- 
viron or shut in, or as we may say, comprehend the mind. Hope- 
less struggle, for the wisest, as for the foolishest ! What strength of 
sinew, or athletic skill, will enable the stoutest athlete to fold his 
own body in his arms, and, by lifting, lift up himself? The Irish 
Saint swam the Channel, ' carrying his head in his teeth ' ; but the 
feat has never been imitated." 

I have read in my time whole libraries of metaphysical 
dialectic — aye, and many of the very latest, and I think I 
see most of what they mean, or ought to mean, and I am 
quite alive to their subtlety and their profundity. But I 
cannot see that in all these seventy-six years since Carlyle 
wrote, they have advanced the problem one inch. The stone 
of Sisyphus ever rolls back down the hill. Oxford calls out 
to Edinburgh ; Birmingham challenges Harvard ; and Glas- 
gow replies to Cambridge. And one and all appeal to Jena, 
Berlin, Tubingen, or Bonn. Now the cry is — "Back to 
Kant!": anon it is — " Hegel to the rescue!": and then 
there comes to the front Neo-Schopenhauerianism, or the 
Pan-Pessimism of Nietzsche, and the Pragmatism of Signore 
Papini. The cry is still they come ! and one after another 
they recede into the distant background, like successive scenes 
in a modern pageant. 

One of the typical characters of Metaphysics is that they 
are thought to have "fashions" like a lady's sleeve or a 
dandy's collar, and to revolve in "seasons." As in the 



XV111 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

modiste's world "every lady now wears electric blue," and 
not to wear electric blue is to be dowdy, so in the Meta- 
physical world Neo-Hegelianism becomes all the fashion, 
and not to care for Nietzsche is to be " Mid- Victorian" and 
old-fashioned. A Privat-docent from Jena or a Dr. Philos. 
of Chicago publishes an " epoch-making " book wherein the 
"Unbewusster Wille" of Schopenhauer, or the "Anstoss" 
of Fichte, and the "Be griff" and the "Idee" receive some 
new development — or it might be final annihilation — and 
forthwith the Metaphysicians of Europe will listen to nothing 
but the new epoch-making Metaphysic. Examiners in Acad- 
emies and reviewers in periodicals, who have to be profes- 
sionally up-to-date, work the new discovery into students 
and readers. We are all so completely under the harrow of 
Examiners and Critics that it requires some courage to confess 
a weakness for what was common sense fifty years ago. But 
I make bold to say that nothing marks the tiro more than 
silly conceits about " fashion" in philosophy. 

If philosophy changes in each decade with any text-book 
of the day, with each professor whose lectures fill his class- 
room, philosophy would be as frivolous a pursuit as the last 
"creation" of the Rue de la Paix. It is not so very much 
that has been permanently added to the solid Philosophy of 
Mind since Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel. 
All of these established something lasting in the bases of 
general philosophy, and all of them have since been criticised, 
corrected, and developed by their successors. I have never 
closed the windows of my own mind to later ideas — indeed 
I have derived some instruction and much amusement from 
some of the latest. But so far as the problems of pure Meta- 
physics are concerned, I hold that the substantial truth of 
the matter may be found in the works of Spencer, Mansel, 
Mill, Lewes, Bain, and Comte, though I am not prepared to 



INTRODUCTION xix 

swear belief in all that we read in any one of these. The 
Professors and Masters of Britain, America, Germany, and 
Europe in general, do not seem to me to have shaken the 
essential truth of the Philosophy of Experience and the 
Relative Synthesis of all human knowledge; and I am not 
to be frightened by the nickname of Mid-Victorian, or of 
old-fashioned, materialist, and the like, from saying again 
what I have held all my life — and hold still as firmly as 
ever. 

It would not be of very grave consequence if addiction to 
Metaphysics stood by itself, and did not affect religion, 
philosophy, morality, and life. Those who pursue these 
studies are not so many, apart from the demands of exami- 
nations, lectures, and reviews of books. But Metaphysics 
do not stand alone. They tend to take the place of Revela- 
tion, which has been pronounced to be " old-fashioned." 
Long years ago Carlyle wrote, "The Christian Religion of 
late ages has been continually dissipating itself into Meta- 
physics ; and threatens now to disappear, as some rivers do, 
in deserts and barren sand." 

Since this terrible indictment of orthodox creeds was 
written, the process of substituting the fashionable Meta- 
physic of the day for Revelation, now superseded by modern 
criticism, has gone on with increasing speed. The Scriptural 
dogmas whereon the entire scheme of religious faith has so 
long been thought to rest are quietly surrendered by men 
who clutch at the nebulous hypotheses of some "Higher 
Consciousness," or the "Absolute as the highest expression 
of Reality," whatever that may mean. As any one can put 
upon either of these phrases, and on many similar phrases, 
any meaning that he likes, they serve as proofs of "God," 
"Soul," "Immortality," about which, in the old and real 
sense, doubts begin to be harboured. 



XX PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

The " Higher Consciousness," "the Absolute," "Intui- 
tional Truth," since they transcend logic and proof, can be 
made to warrant anything that transcends positive know- 
ledge. The famous maxim of Novalis — ' ' Philosophy [mean- 
ing Metaphysics] can bake no bread ; but it can procure for 
us God, Freedom, and Immortality" — has proved a raft of 
comfort to the theologian in the shipwreck of orthodox 
dogma. He throws overboard Scripture, Creeds, Church, 
and Catechism, and rides out the gale on Greek or German 
ambiguities. Metaphysics do not enable us to realise either 
God, Freedom, or Immortality; but they wrap them all in 
a transcendental haze, and enable us to fancy we do know 
them. The sober truth would be this. Metaphysics can 
bake no bread and procure no food, physical or spiritual; 
but they enable us to talk about God, Freedom, and Im- 
mortality when we have abandoned the ancient grounds on 
which we used to believe in them. 

It has become, therefore, of prime importance to test the 
legitimacy of Metaphysical pronouncements, and to have 
clear convictions about the cardinal problems they pretend 
to solve. These pronouncements now take the place of 
Holy Writ and the truths committed to the Church of Christ. 
Bible and Church being found "old-fashioned," religion is 
being under-pinned on transcendental sublimities which, 
though as old as the Bible, are now furbished up with a new 
gloss. 

These are thought to obtain sovereign authority from the 
support given them by a few specialists in Physical Science. 
Certain well-known physicists have given more or less en- 
couragement to spiritualist speculations and Latter-Day 
Theosophies. The illustrious Michael Faraday was a Sande- 
manian ; the living rival of Charles Darwin dabbles in Psy- 
chical Research and has published some amazing revelations 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

about other worlds. There is nothing to prevent a chemist 
or an electrician from being a Mussulman or a Buddhist in 
religious belief. But his views on general philosophy have 
no higher value than those of any botanist, or geometer, or 
microscopist. 

The public has a somewhat credulous way of looking on 
deserved reputations in physical research as equivalent to 
philosophic competence. It is really very often a disad- 
vantage when a specialist is called on to face the ultimate 
generalisations of thought. In these days of minute sub- 
division of labour, a man like Dr. Edison spends his life in 
a series of intricate experiments which almost close his mind 
from touching on psychological problems or the canons 
of demonstration. Wonderful discoveries in the world of 
physics entitle such an one to be called a "man of science," 
but they certainly do not constitute him a philosopher. And 
his opinions on the "Higher Consciousness" or "the im- 
manence of God in Nature" have no greater authority than 
that of any intelligent man who has found no time to study 
the history of philosophy from Plato to Spencer. 

It is the long and complex story of the evolution of meta- 
physical speculation which is really decisive on these prob- 
lems. Almost any of the thousand solutions of "Absolute 
Being," "Ultimate Consciousness," and the "World-Princi- 
ple" have a fascinating plausibility when stated with all the 
specious lucidity of the born metaphysician. It is only 
when the trained student of philosophy, after long years of 
reading and meditation, comes to realise the eternal failure 
of every attempt, the weary round in a closed circle from 
which the victim can find no issue, and is perpetually brought 
back to the same familiar spot from which he started, it is 
only by having traversed all the gloomy circles of the Inferno 
of Ontology, and so through the terraces of the Purgatory of 



xxii PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Intuition, that the mind finally issues in the Heaven of clear 
vision. The only safe way of reaching philosophic clearness 
is to have paced through the secular stages in the history of 
general philosophy. The facile guesses of a specialist in 
Physics can do nothing but "make that darker which was 
dark enough before." 

I am speaking of general tendencies and not of particular 
persons, schools of thought, or phases of religion. It is 
notorious that in the English-speaking world, as in Europe 
generally, there are various schemes of faith which treat the 
orthodox dogmas of all the Churches as untrustworthy or 
obsolete, and yet do find a ground in sonorous Metaphysics 
for as much of Christianity or Theism as they think worth 
preserving. They cherish consolation in all sorts of spiritualist 
hypotheses which may mean anything and are incapable of 
meeting positive refutation. Pantheism, Panlogism, i.e. the 
Infinite and Omnipresent Mind, the Universal Mind, the 
Impersonal Consciousness, and the like may be stretched to 
explain anything and to warrant any proposition. That an 
electrician or an algebraist has toyed with Spooks and Sub- 
liminal Consciousness is a very poor title to install him as a 
Father of the New Theosophy. This novel Patristic Thau- 
maturgy is as purely imaginary as that of Origen or Chrysos- 
tom. Their Materialist or Idealist Book of Genesis is a mere 
fairy-tale, with no more science in it than the Pentateuch. 
It would be a sad end for the Catholic Scheme of Salvation 
which has done so much for civilisation and morality if it has 
to rest on the Revelation of Psychical Research. 

It may be convenient if I set down my own reminiscences 
of how my mind grew under these studies. At school we 
were familiar enough with some of the shorter Dialogues of 
Plato, and had much to say about Socrates' last words as he 
drank the hemlock in prison. But it was at Oxford that I 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

began any serious study of Greek philosophy. There the 
ordinary courses involved a very close and minute reading 
of the principal books of Plato and of Aristotle, and a general 
understanding of the development of Greek philosophy from 
Thales to Proclus — those ten centuries before and after 
Christ wherein the history of speculation curiously follows 
the course of modern Metaphysics from Descartes to Hegel 
and Jowett. 

The essence of the training at Oxford in my time was the 
exact analysis of the treatises of Plato and Aristotle, sen- 
tence by sentence, in the original Greek. I believe this to 
be the most valuable scheme of philosophical study which 
can be followed. I would hesitate to lay down any opinion 
on the use of Greek in general education; but I make bold 
to say that the hammering out every shred of meaning in 
the great standard works of Aristotle is the most illuminating 
mode in which the human mind can be trained. To have 
absorbed the cardinal conceptions of the profoundest intellect 
ever given to man is to be securely launched on the road to 
living Truth. 

Like other students I was, of course, first interested in 
Plato, the fascination of whose language reaches the highest 
point ever attained in any prose. It is always a struggle 
with one who loves fine literature to suffer the mellifluous 
imagination of the Academy to be displaced by the iron- 
bound good sense of the Ethics and the Politics. Equally, 
of course, I took the Metaphysical fever in the usual youth- 
ful form, just as when I thought I understood the Calculus, 
I devoted some time to the quadrature of the Circle. My 
tutor in Logic was a fervent believer in the high-and-dry 
Oxford Dialectic, and I wrote under his guidance reams of 
mysterious disquisitions about " Being," ''Consciousness," 
"Noumena," "Categories," and "The Absolute." There is 



Xxiv PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

a strange fascination in the pursuit, as to some minds there 
is in Chess Problems and the Chances of Rouge et Noir. 
But before I quitted Oxford I was a confirmed Aristotelian; 
and I had learned to apply to the Metaphysics of Plato, and 
the Platonists old and new, the conclusive judgment of 
Aristotle in his second book of Politics — "All these dis- 
quisitions have brilliancy, originality, grace, and profound 
subtlety — but they settle nothing in the end." 

My understanding of the great Greek philosophers was 
promoted by a diligent study of George Grote, Mill, George 
H. Lewes, the early essays of Spencer, and Littre"s analysis 
of Comte's Positivism. I read some Hegel, and I knew 
German Metaphysics at second hand. The modern Meta- 
physicians I read, and was often tempted by the subtleties of 
J. H. Newman, F. D. Maurice, Mansel, James Martineau, 
Jowett, and our modern Hegelians. But all these seemed 
to me in the end to discredit one another. Each would start 
de novo, as though nothing was really settled as a basis. 
But I found that the thinkers of the schools of experience and 
of the relativity of all human knowledge held common 
ground and promised an intelligible method of advance. 

The ingenious term "Agnostic" was not then invented, 
and the idea it connotes was not then applied to religious 
philosophy. But it described Metaphysics — meaning by 
that Ontology, or the Essence of the Universe, Absolute 
Being, the Universal Consciousness, the Soul as an im- 
perishable substance, and the unconditioned Freedom of the 
Will — all this it was finally taught me to regard as Unproven 
and Unprovable. By the time I was thirty I had become 
(metaphysically speaking) a pure and confirmed Agnostic. 

The whole of my philosophical reading was practically 
guided by George H. Lewes' Biographical History of Philoso- 
phy, which I have constantly used in all its successive forms. 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

In its definitive edition of 1880 (two vols. 8vo), I believe it 
to be on the whole the most illuminating account of the 
progress of philosophy from Thales to Comte that exists in 
our language. I am quite aware of Lewes' shortcomings 
both of mind and of character, and I know all the shallow 
contempt which pedantic specialists pour on his works. But 
he has the immense advantage over them — an advantage 
which is partly shared with Mill and Spencer — that he 
exhibits the very rare example of a student of Metaphysics 
who has a competent knowledge of more than one of the 
physical sciences, and thus he comes to problems of Philoso- 
phy with a mind trained to a sense of scientific demonstra- 
tion. In addition to his biological and psychological studies, 
Lewes had a wide grasp of general literature and at least the 
rudiments of Sociology. There was a prejudice against him 
owing to his singularly lucid style and his brilliant form. 
Metaphysicians incline to regard everything lucid to be 
shallow and frivolous. His literary instincts and his know- 
ledge of men saved him from the futilities of the adepts of 
Metaphysics who spin endless cocoons of attenuated ab- 
stractions which settle nothing, even if they could be reduced 
to sense. 

In saying this I do not mean to pledge myself to all of 
Lewes' works, nor to the whole even of his famous History. 
He did not at all assimilate Comte's system, and he very 
imperfectly represented it. I am quite aware that in de- 
fending such work as that of Lewes I am open to the charge 
of being Mid- Victorian and "obsolete," as if everything 
written thirty years ago is necessarily out-of-date and worth- 
less. Books are not like battleships, to become "obsolete" 
directly a foreign Professor has started a new hare to be 
hunted. The raw girls who do "original research" in the 
Records are told that Gibbon is "old-fashioned," and the 



XXVi PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Tariff Reformers on platforms tell working men that Adam 
Smith was an old humbug. But the whole world has not 
yet become the prey of journalists or crammers. And we 
want some better authority than theirs that the metaphy- 
sicians of this generation, with all their batteries of patent 
neologisms — in barbarous Greek, such as they invent for 
trade advertisements — have finally solved the abysmal prob- 
lems left open by Kant and Hegel. 

The fifteen years of study I gave to the five principal 
works of Comte, ending in our Translation of the four vol- 
umes of the Positive Polity, 1875-6-7, confirmed me as a 
full adherent of the Positive Philosophy. Without pretend- 
ing to be convinced by everything laid down by Comte, even 
in abstract Philosophy, the main ideas on which these rest 
satisfy me as proven for all practical purposes of human life. 
I limit myself to this condition because the key of the system 
is just this — that no absolute certainty, no abstract essence 
of any kind is possible, or could be of any human utility even 
if it were possible. At the same time these main ideas of 
Comte are almost wholly unknown in the original texts even 
to students of Philosophy and serious opponents. And they 
have been so absurdly travestied by theological polemists 
and by literary critics that it may be useful to set out some 
of the real Positivist reasons for passing by the assumed 
science of Metaphysics as an idle indulgence in dialectical 
gymnastic. 

The Positive Philosophy refuses to be classed under any 
of the current titles by which other schools seek to distinguish 
themselves or are labelled by opponents. It vehemently 
repudiates the name of Materialism, inasmuch as it rejects 
all physical explanations of human nature as degrading, and 
insists on referring the spiritual nature of Man's soul to 
spiritual ideas. For similar reasons it repudiates the name 



INTRODUCTION XXvii 

of Sensationalism, or Realism, or Experientialism, for it in- 
sists on the dominant power of strictly psychical forces. Nor, 
on the other hand, can it be classed under Idealism, inas- 
much as it will not admit any attempt to identify Thought 
and Reality, or to regard Mind as the source of the Real. 

It is certainly not to be grouped under any form of Monism, 
inasmuch as dual, or plural, elements contribute to every 
truth or conception of sound philosophy. Positivism con- 
demns all attempts at any Unification of Science, all theories 
referring conceptions to any one principle whatever, all 
schemes that would reduce the Sciences to one master-science, 
or would derive our World — much less the Universe — 
from any one source, whether material or ideal. The domi- 
nant system of classification preferred by Comte is Dual; 
he often resorts to the trinal, though far from accepting 
Hegel's eternal triads; in fact Comte resorts often to the 
numbers five, seven, and even thirteen : — perhaps he is in- 
clined to a fanciful use of numbers. But he never inclines 
to any type of Monism. 

The erroneous idea that Positivism rests upon any single 
principle or idea was encouraged by Mill's misunderstanding 
Comte's use of the word Unite. With Comte, right or wrong, 
unite means synthesis — not unity — and the synthesis is 
necessarily dual, or more often trinal, in idea. With Comte 
even Humanity did not stand alone as a single object of 
reverence, as a solitary source of power. In his last work, 
of 1856, he developed his theory of a Trinity of dominant 
objects of human regard — Humanity, Earth, and Space. 
This conception, right or wrong, has been almost wholly 
ignored in England, and seems to be unknown to the critics 
of Positivism. But it is conclusive against the idea that 
Comte's whole mind was obsessed by a passion for Unity. 
For all purposes, both theoretical and practical, Positivism 



XXViii PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

as a system is much rather Trinitarian than it is Unitarian 
in any sense. As Dr. Bridges wrote in his masterly exposure 
of Mill's mistaken criticism — "The repudiation of Unity, in 
the objective sense of the word, is the essence of Comtek 
Philosophy" L ) unite with Comte always means harmony, 
co-ordination, as Littre in his Dictionary explains it — un 
caractere oV ensemble, — and he quotes its use, in that sense 
of consistency, by Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Marmontel. 
Mill's error was a simple case of mistranslation. 

A similar misunderstanding led to the current assertion 
that Comte repudiated Psychology ; and the mistake of Mill, 
who read the Politique Positive without due care, was eagerly 
seized upon by Huxley, who did not read the book at all. 
What Comte repudiated was not Psychology, or the laws of 
Mind, but Psychologie — by which he meant the introspective 
method of observing one's own intuitions as taught about 
1830 by Victor Cousin and his school. This was a totally 
different thing from true Psychology, and was rejected alike 
by Mill, Spencer, Lewes, Huxley, and all modern psychol- 
ogists. When Comte was composing his treatises about 
seventy years ago, the term " Psychologie " in France meant 
the fashionable Idealist Theosophy. It was this which 
Comte repudiated — not the Laws of Mind in the true 
sense. 

It may be that Comte too rigidly excluded the rational use 
of self -introspection — of which indeed he made frequent 
employment by way of memory in his own meditations. 
He perhaps overrated the difficulty of scientific Introspec- 
tion, so well stated by Spencer as this — "The mere act of 
observing the current phenomena of consciousness introduces 
a new element into consciousness which tends to disturb the 
processes going on. The observations should be oblique 
rather than direct; should be made not during but im- 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

mediately after the appropriate experiences." This is really 
to repudiate any real, i.e. direct, use of Introspection, as also 
did Hume; and so far both Hume and Spencer agree with 
Comte. For my own part, after careful study of Spencer's 
Psychology (1870) and of G. H. Lewes' Psychology (1879), 
I am inclined to accept their general analyses as sufficient, 
and in any case these seem to me to be only modifications of 
Comte's position, that Psychology as a study must be treated 
with dependence on Biology and in succession to Biology, 
but really developed by Sociology. 

What Comte did was to repudiate Intuitional Introspec- 
tion as a treacherous instrument, and to refuse to make Psy- 
chology a separate and independent science. In declining 
to treat Psychology as a separate science he followed his 
general principle — one most true as well as illuminating — 
that a branch of study which combined resort to different 
sciences should be regarded as a concrete and mixed, not an 
abstract and simple form of research. Geology, resorting to 
Astronomy, Physics, Biology alternately, is not a pure science. 
Economics, for the same reason, resorting as it does to biol- 
ogy, geography, mechanics, sociology, history, politics, and 
morals, is not a distinct science, but a branch of Sociology. 
Comte altogether only admitted seven distinct sciences, from 
Mathematics to Morals, as being distinct in method and 
data. Other branches of science were to be classified under 
some of these seven. But all this is a question of classifica- 
tion, of order of study, not of substantial philosophy. 

It is now a stale jest to tell the world that Positivism re- 
pudiates the study of Psychology. If by Psychology is meant 
the study of the laws of Mind, the analysis, by every avail- 
able means, of the moral and intellectual functions of man, 
Positivism is pre-eminently concerned with Psychology. 
The trite sneer arose from misunderstanding a French word, 



XXX PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

and then misunderstanding a very plain and highly scientific 
doctrine of philosophy. For forty years past Dr. Bridges, 
Professor Beesly, Professor Ingram, myself, and other Posi- 
tivists at home and abroad, have insisted that "all the facts 
of the human will, of Consciousness, of the Imagination, of 
Conscience — all the laws of man's moral and intellectual 
nature, ascertainable by human observation and meditation, 
are in a special degree the subject-matter of Positivism." 
Although Comte did not write any special treatise on Psy- 
chology, he treated it continually through all his principal 
works in its due place; and, in fact, he wrote a great deal 
more about the laws of Mind than some of his critics. It 
would be as reasonable to tell us that Adam Smith repudiated 
Political Economy on the ground that the Wealth of Nations 
interfuses Plutonomy with much that is Politics, History, 
Social Statics, and Dynamics. 

Another charge, arising out of a verbal misconception, is 
that Positivism is a "Phenomenal" system, resting on mere 
"sensationalism," and consequently a form of materialism. 
In modern philosophy since the time of Hume, the term 
phenomenon describes anything of which the mind can take 
cognisance, which we perceive, meditate on, are conscious of, 
or reason on. In common with all modern philosophers, 
Positivists often employ this generic term to mean the data 
of observation and meditation, whether presented to the 
senses or recalled by association, and forming the material 
of thought. By a device familiar to the pulpit and to the 
platform, but unworthy of philosophy, an eminent Meta- 
physician has sought to label Positivism as mere materialism. 
Years ago we replied that Positivism embraces as its subject- 
matter "all things of which any thinking and sentient being 
is conscious. All facts of consciousness, all mental impres- 
sions and ideas of any kind are just as much its subject- 



INTRODUCTION XXXI 

matter as they are that of any theologian and metaphysician." 
"It excludes nothing cognisable or even recognisable by the 
brain; it does not shut out any hypothesis." "All things 
thinkable are the common subject of the Positivist and the 
Metaphysician. The difference lies in their different canons 
of proof and methods of reasoning." 

A great deal is said by modern Metaphysicians who insist 
on apportioning the intellectual element, not only in the use 
made by the brain of the observations presented to the senses, 
but also in the act of sensation itself. They show that there 
can be no perception of anything external without some kind 
of mental element concurring in it. This was emphatically 
the view of Comte, who insists that the very smallest sensa- 
tion is ineffective without combination with Mind. And he 
formulates the dual nature of every external impression in 
his reiterated dogma that "all laws of nature are constructed 
by our minds out of materials drawn from without." All 
our conceptions about Nature, he adds, are "the product of 
a collaboration between the World without and the Mind 
within us." And this applied to all our ideas of every kind. 
They all result from mental powers dealing with external 
sensations. 

But sound Philosophy makes no attempt exactly to appor- 
tion the relative amount of objective and subjective elements, 
nor does it expect ever to arrive at any absolute analysis of 
either element. Comte adopts "the maxim of Aristotle as 
corrected by Leibnitz" — nihil est in intellectu quod non 
fuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus. But he repudiates as 
idle all attempts to apportion the subjective and the objective 
elements in the combined process. Organic sensation of 
some kind, in some degree, cannot be eliminated from any 
conception whatever. But this is a very different thing from 
the materialism of Condillac that "the brain secretes thought," 



XXxii PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

and similar theories which would make Thought a bare 
process of the physical organs. And it is a different thing 
from the Neo-Hegelianism which would make the objective 
Universe coincide with subjective Mind. 

To sum up the cardinal principles of the Philosophy which 
this volume is intended to illustrate, they are these. The 
name Positive in the language of Comte means real, useful, 
certain, precise, organic, relative, and sympathetic. In other 
words, it is based on demonstrable knowledge of certain 
truths and works under right feeling to guide active life. 
It combines Intellect, Affection, and Energy, having as its 
constant end the improvement of man's life as a social being 
on this earth. 

It consequently belongs to the philosophy based on Experi- 
ence, Association, Observation of facts physical, intellectual, 
and moral, which since the time of Hume has filled so large 
and fertile a ground in modern Thought. It starts with 
fundamental axioms such as the universal Reign of Law, the 
Relativity of knowledge, and the conception of Evolution, 
which are the groundwork of all that is most dominant in 
modern Science. All of this is common ground with Posi- 
tivism and so many schools of European philosophy. 

i. The fundamental dogma of science and of philosophy 
is this: "All facts of observation whatever, organic or in- 
organic, physical or moral, individual or social, are always 
subject to strictly invariable law." This doctrine is so famil- 
iar to all who follow the trend of modern thought, and it is 
so widely accepted both in theory and in practice, that it 
need not be further discussed. 

2. All knowledge is based upon observation of facts, 
whether derived directly through the senses or obtained by 
reflection from antecedent impressions. But, inasmuch as 
these are all derived from the compound human organism, 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

all man's knowledge must be limited more or less by the com- 
pound faculties of the organism and by the conditions under 
which they work. In ultimate resort, sensation, though not 
the direct or sole source of knowledge and of ideas, cannot be 
eliminated as contributing to everything we know or conceive. 
It follows from the preceding laws, that all our know- 
ledge must be relative, not absolute. That is to say, it can- 
not transcend the human faculties, physical, moral, and men- 
tal, plus the physical and social conditions wherein these 
faculties operate. The Relativity of knowledge, indeed of 
truth, morality, and life in general, has been carried further 
by Comte than by Hamilton, Mansel, Mill, Spencer, or any 
other philosopher. Comte's epigram is this — Everything is 
relative — not absolute, unless it be this axiom itself. 

3. All observation, whether in the material, moral, or 
social worlds, manifests a continuous development which, 
in modern phraseology, is known as Evolution. Positive 
philosophy adopts in the fullest sense the doctrine of Evolu- 
tion in all things terrestrial, whilst declining to accept monis- 
tic hypotheses about a Cosmogony of the Universe, and pre- 
mature hypotheses about vital and animal transformism. 
But it applies the law of continuous Evolution, on demon- 
strable evidence, to all known phenomena of the physical 
world, to human nature, and above all to social, moral, 
intellectual, and religious Progress. Comte's famous apo- 
thegm is Progress is the development of Order. By this is 
meant — all true and effective advance and improvement is 
the resultant of elements previously co-ordinated and capable 
of growth. Everything we know in Nature, in Man, and in 
Society, is evolved out of antecedent elements — but is neither 
transformed into new elements — nor does it ever arise spon- 
taneously, unprepared, or de novo. 

4. The laws of the human Mind cannot be framed by 



xxxiv PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

any process of Self-introspection and must be grounded on 
a study of the nervous organism generally. Rational Psy- 
chology is so far dependent on Biology, and cannot be com- 
pleted without the study of the Social Organism. All at- 
tempts of Metaphysicians to form an independent science of 
Psychology by "interrogating the consciousness" of the indi- 
vidual thinker are futile and misleading. 

5. The evolution of human Society in all its aspects is as 
much due to intelligible law as is that of the living and ma- 
terial world. The study of the Social Organism accordingly 
forms a true science which is known to European thinkers 
as Sociology — the admirable name invented by Comte in 
1839. This science from its infinitely greater complexity is 
far less capable of exact determination than any of the 
physical sciences of Nature and Life. But its elementary 
conditions and logic are already sufficiently ascertained. 
Comte never claimed more than to have instituted this 
science, without having constituted it as a whole. And no 
European thinker of importance treats it as having attained 
more than a rudimentary plan. 

These five propositions are, in a general sense, common 
ground with all the schools of the philosophy of Experience and 
are familiar to the students of Mill, Buckle, Bain, Spencer, and 
Lewes, and many modern philosophers at home and abroad. 

I now pass to summarise the cardinal points in the Posi- 
tive Philosophy which are specially due to Auguste Comte 
and which this volume is intended to illustrate. 

6. The entire scheme of Sociology — considered not as a 
possible science, or as positing a few general doctrines, but 
as the crown and development of all the natural Sciences 
that precede it ; distinctly and definitively instituted in ground 
plan and dominant method, but far from constituted in com- 
pleteness or in detail. This new science, now accepted by a 



INTRODUCTION XXXV 

second and third generation of European thinkers, is described 
in the four volumes of the Positive Polity, Paris, 1 851 -1854; 
English translation, London, 1875-1877. It forms the basis of 
the Science of Morals, and of the Religion of Humanity. 

7. The law of the Three States of intellectual progress, 
i.e. that all our knowledge begins by supposing fictitious 
explanations, then refers facts to hypothetical "principles," 
and ultimately rests in scientific or positive proofs. This 
law has been enthusiastically approved by Mill, Littre, 
Lewes, and many other thinkers. It is fully discussed in the 
twelfth Essay in this volume. 

8. The Classification of the seven Sciences in the order 
of their increasing complexity of matter and decreasing 
generality of range. They are Mathematics, Astronomy, 
Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Sociology, Morals. All admit 
numerous subdivisions; but no one of these seven can be 
included in, or explained by, any other. Each science, in 
the order named, leads up to and forms the indispensable 
basis of the next above it. All of these are regarded as 
abstract — not as concrete — schemes of knowledge. That is 
to say, these are Sciences stating the laws of independent 
orders of phenomena, whilst concrete sciences treat of things 
in practical application and in variable combinations. A 
complete classification of concrete science from its complexity 
would be an impracticable undertaking. Comte's Classifica- 
tion of the Sciences has been vigorously defended by Mill, 
Littr6, Lewes, Levy-Bruhl, Dr. Ingram, and others. 

9. The Philosophy of History — a summary sketch of 
human civilisation from prehistoric times to the nineteenth 
century. This is contained in the third volume of the Poli- 
tique Positive, 1853, PP- 625. It has had no rival but that 
of Hegel, which few unless Hegelians can accept as a sub- 
stantive explanation of the historic record. Comte's view of 



XXXvi PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

general history has been in general terms adopted and 
warmly defended by Mill. 

10. Psychology, considered not as an abstract science 
capable of being systematised independently as the Laws of 
Thought, but as closely bound up with the Physical science 
of Biology, both animal and human, and as being largely 
dependent on Sociology, and explicable only by social anal- 
ogies and evidence. There is no separable science of the 
human Mind, for intellectual processes of all kinds are in- 
extricably mingled with emotions and active impulses, and 
are to be duly studied by the aid of a multitude of biologic 
facts and also by the data of social science. 

ii. Philosophy, in accordance with the immortal dictum 
of Aristotle, is no bare scheme of intellectual doctrines, but 
is legitimate only as it aims at guiding and modifying human 
life. Man is not a thinking machine, but a compound organ- 
ism wherein intelligence, feeling, and activity are continually 
working in concert, and wherein these elements can only be 
distinguished apart, temporarily and in the abstract. Philos- 
ophy cannot be detached from morality, society, and religion. 
All of these imply philosophy and ultimately rest upon it. 

12. Religion is the definitive harmony of intelligence, feel- 
ing, and activity co-operating to an ideal perfection of hu- 
man well-being, and satisfying all three sides of human 
nature by a Creed, a Discipline, and a Cult — which do not 
conflict with each other, but stimulate and modify each other. 

13. As man's intellect can find rest only in realities, not in 
dreams, as man's feelings crave for a larger humanity, not 
an anti-human exclusiveness, as man's activity imperiously 
thirsts for a development of his earthly life — the harmony 
of intellect, feeling, and activity can be realised only by 
devotion to the practically perpetual, and relatively great 
being — the organism of Humanity. 



ON THE SUPPOSED NECESSITY OF CERTAIN 
METAPHYSICAL PROBLEMS 

The questions which the mind sets itself to solve are deter- 
mined jrom time to time by the mental habit, as a whole; and 
there are no special questions which the mind is naturally 
forced to consider, or which it is unable to ignore. 

In the awful portal of Metaphysics, vestibulum ante ipsum, 
it is said there sits, and will for ever sit, an immovable Sphinx, 
eternally propounding to all who would enter a problem, 
which all must attempt to solve, but which none will ever 
untie. The answers ever vary; yet all are wrong. Those 
who, weary of a monotonous aenigma, would pass on without 
attempting a solution, are warned that the answer is one 
which, if never found, is bound to be for ever sought. They 
are told that there is a special question — perhaps three or 
four questions — which the mind, of its own nature, is com- 
pelled to ask, however little expectation it may have of obtain- 
ing an answer. 

There are, it is said, certain ultimate problems in meta- 
physics, such as these — whence the origin of things, of 
what sort is the personal government of the universe, the 
incorporeal personality of the human animal, its prolonga- 
tion after death ; in other words, the creation, God, the soul, 
and a future state — these and some similar problems, 
though ever shifting their solutions, are eternally destined to 
be asked. They have been discussed, it is true, by various 



2 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

portions of the human race during long epochs of history, 
not only without anything like agreement, but with the most 
amazing discord. A portion of the population of Europe 
is still discussing them; and yet perhaps there has never 
been a period in which the chaos of thought on this subject 
has been more profound. To those who apply the tests 
which suffice for daily life there is not one fixed point, not 
a scrap of common ground amongst the disputants. The 
followers of various sects, and they can scarcely be counted, 
all differ among themselves; and even the authorities 
in each sect differ among each other. 

Within the Church of England, for instance, conceptions 
of God as different as those of Dean Mansel and Mr. Jowett 
carry on internecine war. The sects of metaphysical phi- 
losophers are as little agreed in their answers. And Hegelians 
and Hamiltonians reproduce the same metaphysical-theo- 
logical phantasmagoria. There is this great difference be- 
tween this branch of mental activity and that immediately 
concerned with material, social, or logical progress. The 
discussion never advances. Nothing is ever established as a 
fixed foundation, on which all can proceed to build. Every 
thinker starts de novo. He does not even accept another 
man's bricks, wherewith to make his walls : nor does he 
raise them on another's ground-plan. He must make his 
own bricks, with or without straw, precisely as he chooses; 
design his edifice according to his personal fancy ; and for a 
site he has the wide world to choose from, and even the air. 
It seems in truth to be the note of a really superior meta- 
physician in this field that he should begin with a tabula rasa, 
and then evolve his definitions, his postulates, his axioms, 
his method, his language, for himself; and perhaps after 
many centuries, there never was a moment when conscientious 
theologians and metaphysicians were so little inclined as they 



NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS 3 

are now to accept these essential instruments from one an- 
other, or from anybody. 

Nothing can be in more direct contrast with the course 
taken by Science. The knowledge slowly won by man over 
nature and her laws is progressive. The torch is really 
carried on from age to age, lighting as it passes. In astron- 
omy, physics, physiology, inquiries lead to solutions which 
are universally accepted; masses of subjects pass from the 
sphere of problems and enter into that of laws ; and in turn 
they form the basis from which fresh problems are sought and 
solved. Problems which yield no fruit are abandoned. 
The trained mind acquires a sense of tact which directs it to 
the subjects which are most likely to yield fruit, and of which 
its successors are most likely to be in need. There is no single 
instance of this filiation of truth in the whole theological 
department of metaphysics. There is here no torch handed 
on. We see only rockets which whiz into the sky, crackle, 
and go out, and all is as dark as it was before, till a fresh 
rocket lights the gloom, dazzles us, — and drops. 

The direct study of man's moral, social, and intellectual 
nature, it is true, can show far less of solid and common 
ground, and far less transmission of results, than does physi- 
cal science. But that is, unfortunately, only because it is 
less scientific in its method. Still at the worst, there are large 
groups of discoveries in mental, moral, and social science, 
which are for every practical purpose common axioms, data 
for fresh inquiry. For an example, let us take Mr. Mill's 
two works on Logic and Political Economy. A good many 
of his doctrines, both in mental and social science, may fairly 
be said to be adhuc sub judice, but a very large proportion 
of them are collected from previous thinkers, and are in 
ordinary use as common ground. The same thing is true of 
the work of Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Harnack, and Renan. 



j 



4 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

There are, again, groups of notions as to the general 
course of human development and historical progress which 
are also the common material of social science in every school. 
The progress here is far less accentuated than it is in physical 
science ; but there is real progress. There is a transmission 
of results, and large common data. No one, for instance, 
would be listened to who said that the human race as a 
whole was standing still, or was going back ; whereas, on the 
subject of Creation, for instance, any conceivable proposition 
would find hearers ; and none would surprise any one. 
There is not a single axiom on the topic which can guide, or 
need trammel any one. The assertor is as free as air; and 
so of course is his successor. 

Whence this striking difference between theologico-meta- 
physical and positive scientific labours? In science, if a 
problem, after centuries of study, yields no solid ground, it is 
silently abandoned as an unprofitable mine. No scientific 
inquirer dreams of starting de novo, and where he gets no 
answers, he ceases to put questions. There are, however, 
certain religious or metaphysical problems where the in- 
quirer contentedly accepts the part of Sisyphus. He toils 
with his stone up the hill, heaving it over every obstacle, 
and perfectly conscious that it is destined to roll down when 
it reaches the top. His greatness appears to consist in the 
philosophy with which he accepts the inevitable result of 
his labours. He works alone, accepting no help, trans- 
mitting no result. He has fellow-toilers, but no fellow-work- 
men. Those around him are Tantali and Danaids, grasp- 
ing the impalpable, shaping the formless. Quisque suos 
patimur manes. But we do not work in concert. This is 
not what we call thought and action in the living world, 
where labour is really associated, and appears to be attended 
with results. 



NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS 5 

There is, however, a thought which excludes despair, even 
in those inquirers who are most conscious of failure of per- 
manent success. We are continually assured that these ulti- 
mate mysteries differ in kind from the problems of science. 
In science, it seems that we are under no necessity to pursue 
any inquiry in which we reach no hard bottom. If we see no 
reasonable prospect of an answer, we are not forced to put 
the question. We are not in science set to certain problems 
as to a Rhadamanthine task. Whereas, they say the human 
mind is so constituted that, in metaphysics, whether it finds 
a solution or not, it is still impelled to busy itself with these 
particular problems. 

We often hear that it is a part of our mental system ; that 
we are not free agents in the matter. We are said to have 
implanted in us an everlasting query, or a half-dozen of 
everlasting queries ; we experience a sublime curiosity on two 
or three topics — a divine longing to solve a group of sacred 
riddles. This hope springs, they say, immortal in the human 
breast, insatiable, if unsatisfied. These alone of all others, 
they say, cry aloud in every human being that has not a 
diseased mind or a depraved nature. It may be, they argue, 
that no particular answer brings satisfaction, but can you 
exclude the craving to ask? It is often summed up in the 
words of the vulgarest of all the strong minds — "It is all 
very well, gentlemen, but who made all those stars?" Thus 
failure teaches no lesson, and breeds no despair. For if 
each solution is destroyed, the problem is indestructible. 
Indeed, a great philosopher has tried to make the Unknow- 
able the basis or perhaps the apex of Philosophy, the object 
and sustenance of the religious sentiment. All altars are to be 
destroyed save that which is raised "to the Unknown God." 

The result is that scientific thought and social activity 
are alike clogged by a vague, debilitating dream. When it 



6 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

is put into distinct words, which it seldom is, it amounts to 
this. The mind of man, they say, innately craves an answer 
to these questions — Of what sort is the Being that has 
created this universe ? — of what kind shall be the future 
of the Soul after death ? These, they urge, are the paramount 
questions which men never can ignore. No philosophy, no 
system of life, is worthy an hour's attention, unless it start 
with these the primary perennial problems of the human soul. 
To this I venture to oppose the following propositions : — 
i. These questions are not innate in the mind. On the 
contrary, they are artificial, and result from peculiar habits 
of mind ; and, in fact, they cannot be traced in some of the 
most remarkable groups and races of mankind, nor in some 
of the most powerful minds. 

2. These particular questions do not differ in kind from 
many theologico-metaphysical questions which have been 
often agitated. 

3. Many of such long-forgotten questions have appeared 
to various groups of mankind of transcendent importance, 
and have occupied in their minds a larger space than do any 
such problems in ours. 

4. But all of these questions, once of primary interest, 
have disappeared silently under a changed current in general 
philosophy. 

5. The mind, however, will continue to be agitated by 
a succession of useless problems, even after they have been 
recognised as insoluble, until its activity is permanently in- 
spired by an overpowering social emotion. 

In spite, therefore, of the hypotheses of so many meta- 
physicians, and the dogmas of so many theologians, I am 
fain to believe that these particular questions are not in- 
digenous in the human mind. I make bold to say that the 
natural mind is as well able to ignore them as it is to ignore 



NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS 7 

other questions. I certainly deny that any particular answer 
is innate, and I doubt if the questions are more innate than 
the answers. I incline to think the human mind was not 
sent into the world with an irrepressible mania for putting 
half-a-dozen particular riddles, of asking a set of questions 
which never get answered. I believe the mind to have an 
immense curiosity after an infinite number of problems. 
What these problems may be from time to time depends upon 
the natural and acquired bent of the mind. I can conceive 
no radical difference in kind between the problems mentioned 
in the outset and many other problems which could be sug- 
gested. The particular questions which the mind puts for 
solution are not instinctive, but artificial. That is to say, 
they depend on the general diathesis of each mind, which 
depends partly on its special quality and cultivation, and 
partly on the social influences around it. The paramount 
importance of any given problem is determined for each mind 
by the mental habit as a whole. Where we see a particular 
problem occupying this paramount importance in any given 
age or race, it only proves the prevalence of some particular 
habit of mind. What I deny is that the history of the human 
race shows any particular problem uniformly holding the domi- 
nant place. And certainly I would say this of the particular 
problems now under discussion. I can draw no solid distinction 
between them and many other objects of mental curiosity. 

For instance, the origin of the Universe or the creation of 
this Planet are still prominent subjects of speculation. I 
should say this is a consequence of the prevalence of certain 
forms of thought, the development of which it is easy to 
trace. I cannot see that either problem is (philosophically) 
a more pressing one than the problem as to the nature of 
Protoplasm, or if there be any Protoplasm. If meditation 
could supply us, a priori, with a sufficient knowledge of the 



8 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

nature and laws of Protoplasm — that is to say, of the ulti- 
mate elements of all life — it would be impossible to over- 
estimate the importance of such knowledge. It would cer- 
tainly be associated with every thought, act, and feeling of 
our natures. It would throw a new light over every one of 
these spheres of life. If the problem is not to all persons one 
of absorbing interest, it is, perhaps, because the few who ex- 
pect any sort of solution do not look for it to meditation h 
priori. But I can easily conceive a world — nor need we 
travel for it as far as Laputa — in which the one primary 
problem, the one question that never could be shut out, was 
the existence of a protoplasm, and its primary laws. 

Let me a little protect my position by a few disclaimers. 
I would not say one word in disparagement of the phil- 
osophical quality of Curiosity. I am rather defending it 
against those who would narrow it to a few eternal problems, 
and stale its infinite variety by condemning it to so monoto- 
nous a task. I do not deny that Curiosity is a most ex- 
cellent thing ; I say its forms are not four or five, but myriads. 
Then, again, there are many who on philosophical, or on 
religious grounds, are satisfied that the problems are solved. 
To those who find these solutions complete, final and per- 
manent, I have, of course, not a word to say. I have not 
now a word to say as to any supposed solution; nor do I 
say that the problems are insoluble in the abstract. Nor 
do I say one word against the unsuspected benefits which 
may ensue in the mere course of seeking. Those who feel 
they have found, those who desire to seek, are all my good 
friends. All that I desire is to claim the liberty not to feel 
forced to ask questions of which we have hitherto heard no 
solution ; and to be able to do this without the reproach of 
violating our inmost natures, or committing any other of the 
darker metaphysical sins. 



NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS 



9 



I have said that history does not show the- human race to 
be eternally occupied with these particular problems, or 
indeed any particular problem or group of problems. There 
have been vast ages and mighty races, which they have 
troubled as little as they trouble horses or dogs. It is usual 
entirely to put aside the testimony of all the uncivilised or 
semi-civilised races. And thus countless myriads of intelli- 
gent human beings, as completely our ancestors, as entirely 
links in the chain of progress as our own parents, are ab- 
stracted from the inquiry into the innate qualities of the 
human mind. Certain half-barbarous tribes have certainly 
had ideas which may fairly stand as the germs of those now 
in review. But very large groups of these tribes cannot be 
said, without violent straining, to have had on such subjects 
as the creation of the universe, or the soul of man, a spark 
either of opinion or of curiosity. They are as innocent of 
any answer to the problem as of the problem itself. 

I will not enter on the discussion whether or not they have 
religious ideas. I should be the last to deny they had. I 
will not say that they have no conceptions of Divine Beings, 
or spiritual relations. I limit myself strictly to the statement 
that their religious ideas and their spiritual problems are 
certainly not ours, or anything remotely like ours. They do 
not concern themselves with the creation of the universe 
or the distinction of soul and body, for the excellent reason 
that their minds are unable to grasp these ideas. They often 
show a very high intelligence, and are in practical things 
progressive enough. But in things spiritual, the problems 
which profoundly impress them, are how to cheat some kind of 
devil, or how to avoid some form of taboo. Taboo, in fact, 
weighs upon their souls precisely as the Judgment weighs 
upon some Christians. It is the one question which never 
can be shut out. All this, and at the lowest computation it 



10 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

is the experience of about nine-tenths of the human beings 
who have probably lived on this planet, it is usual to exclude 
from the discussion. But why so? They are complete, in- 
telligent human beings, who undoubtedly progress under 
favourable conditions. 

In an inquiry what are the eternal characteristics of the 
human mind, we ought not to exclude them as being un- 
civilised. The most barbarous tribes exhibit powers of 
reasoning, of contrivance, of abstraction, in a word, all the 
powers really instinctive in the mind, though it may be in a 
low form. If you say that these ultimate mysteries only as- 
sume their importance with mental cultivation, that is pre- 
cisely what I am urging. I say they only come into promi- 
nence with mental training of a certain kind. If they are 
instinctive tendencies of the mind, how can we explain their 
absence in great groups of uncultivated minds? If you say 
they have other mysteries of their own, I do not deny it. The 
human mind has an ample curiosity. Only their mysteries 
are utterly different from ours, and form no proof that these 
mysteries are eternal and instinctive. They prove the contrary. 

But to leave the ruder tribes, it is certain that over enor- 
mous periods of time, and in races of remarkable intelligence, 
the questions under immediate discussion have excited no 
kind of attention. Other races and ages have had their 
grand problems, but they have had nothing to do with the 
creation of the world or the destiny of the soul. The Chinese, 
from their numbers, their antiquity as a race, and the per- 
sistence of their civilisation, form one of the most striking 
branches of the human family. They show a high intelli- 
gence, a profound interest in moral questions, and they have 
one of the noblest and most ancient of religions. Yet it is 
certain that the Creation of the Universe, Divine Govern- 
ment of the World, God or Gods, future life, are ideas un- 



NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS II 

known to them. They have no opinion on these subjects, 
and they never inquire into them. They worship the sky, 
the visible vault of Heaven, but they never assume that it 
made the Earth. They are deeply interested in the Earth 
and all that is thereon. But they never seek to know, nor 
do they pretend to know, how it came about. As to the 
future life of the soul, they have as little curiosity. They 
have never answered the question, and they never propose it. 
They are, however, intensely interested in the dead as dead 
men. They know nothing about incorporeal personality, 
though they cherish a religious veneration for the corporeal 
personalities of their own ancestors. 

Let us turn to Hindoos, at various times. These have an 
intense speculative activity, and in many things are curiously 
assimilated with the European mind. At times they have 
undoubtedly thrown up problems bearing some remote re- 
semblance to those in question. They have, in fact, eagerly 
pursued theologico-metaphysical problems. But Buddhism 
is the metaphysical product of the Hindoo intellect. During 
many centuries it held absolute sway over myriads of different 
races, and after twenty-four centuries it still retains much of 
its mighty empire. It can boast of great speculative intel- 
lects, a sublime morality, and a devotional spirit of a unique 
kind. Yet it is certain that to the Budhist, Creation, if 
intelligible at all, was at most a disorder or a muddle ; future 
life was a horrible dread; the continuance of existence the 
principle of evil, and the soul the ever-present curse. The 
pure Buddhist, one of the noblest of all the religious natures, 
not only did not dread the extinction of his personality, but 
he thirsted after it and prayed for it with ecstasy. Annihila- 
tion is his heaven ; God, as the creator and the sustainer of 
things, is his fiend and his adversary. His Sphinx puts a 
very different problem from that of Christian philosophers, — 



12 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

not how was it all made, but how shall it all end ? He, in his 
Pilgrim's Progress, borne down by his burden, might be 
heard crying out, in tones as pathetic as Christian's, "Who 
shall deliver me from the wrath that is ? how can I enter into 
the world which is not?" 

I venture to think that this instance is crucial. Here we 
have one of the high religious types, with a mind of singular 
subtlety, and a conscience of strange tenderness, to whom the 
great problem is not Creation, but Destruction; who never 
asks for the origin of things, but meditates only on their end ; 
to whom every power which has to do with matter is the 
principle of evil, whose one hope is eternal Death. After 
this how can we continue to argue that the soul cannot con- 
template annihilation, nor the mind conceive it; that the 
conscience never rests till it feels in contact with its Maker? 
The Buddhist philosopher, who was a metaphysician pur sang, 
no doubt had his own metaphysical problems. But his 
problems were other than, or rather contrary to, ours. And 
when we are assured that no system can satisfy the human 
intellect unless it reveal to us the Creator of the world and 
the future life of the soul, we may answer that Buddhism, 
to which Christianity and Mahometanism are neophytes, 
eliminated both ideas, while remaining the religion of myriads. 

The same thing might be said of the Greek and Roman 
nations. They are of course our close cousins in race, and 
our immediate ancestors in thought. Much of our phi- 
losophy is in cast of thought, as in language, simply Greek. 
And hence the germs of our metaphysical problems may 
easily be traced back to Greek sources. But with all these 
deductions, how little can we say that the practical intelligent 
Greek and Roman, the heroes of Plutarch, for instance, and 
the men of their time, were seriously occupied with the ques- 
tions now before us, in any sense indeed in which we under- 



NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS 1 3 

stand them. At times both Greeks and Romans thought 
about Gods ; but these were simply the personifications and 
emanations of various things themselves; certainly not the 
beings who created them. Some Greek philosophers busied 
themselves early about the principle of things ; but by that 
they mean the primitive form of things, not the Creator of 
that primitive form. They had also a kind of worship of 
ghosts, distinctly different from the Chinese worship of the 
dead. But except when under the influence of those special 
philosophical or religious systems that we are now discussing, 
which, of course, are found in Plato or Lucretius, the practi- 
cal Greek or Roman never showed the smallest vital interest 
either in the problem of the origin of things, or of his own 
living personality after death. 

It would be very easy, but it is quite unnecessary, to follow 
out this argument into numerous illustrations. It would 
soon appear not only that large portions of the human race 
have been permanently indifferent to questions which we are 
now told ever present themselves to every human mind, but 
that the races and the ages in which these questions have held 
a foremost place form a very decided minority of the whole. 
Races and epochs under different philosophical influences 
have been occupied with totally different sets of problems. 
These were often metaphysical problems, appropriate to 
their mental state. But they were not ours ; and they show 
that many remarkable societies and philosophies make no 
account of the so-called instinctive questions. The questions 
which to us seem instinctive could not even be rendered 
intelligible to them. Those which to them seemed the eternal 
interests of the human soul are to us puerile or horrible. 
And we need both study and imagination to conceive the 
logical processes which suggested to them hypotheses so 
strange, and problems so grotesque. 



14 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Let us now turn to the converse. We often hear it said 
that such questions as those under discussion have for every 
human being an importance so overwhelming that they must 
always remain apart, while human nature is unchanged. 
Now, there is no evidence whatever that these problems at 
all differ in importance from a vast number which have been 
silently abandoned. Nor is there any reason to think that 
the mind has any difficulty in abandoning the search of what 
it is deeply concerned to know, so soon as it has abandoned 
the hope of attaining that knowledge. It is a really gratuitous 
supposition that these particular questions at all surpass in 
importance many which have been asked with profound 
earnestness in many ages. 

The problem of the freedom or necessity of the will was 
once one of the cardinal questions of thought. If that ques- 
tion could have been solved, if the doctrine of Necessity 
could have secured its logical victories, it is impossible to 
overrate the enormous importance that its solution must have 
had on human life. If Kismet were a fact, and not merely 
a logical fallacy, human nature would take a different turn. 
It seems difficult to say that any problem as to the origin of 
the Universe, or the superhuman government of it apart from 
its laws, is to a man a problem more important than whether 
or not he has a free moral nature. The problem of Free Will 
or Necessity is still unsolved. Neither alternative has gained 
a permanent hold. Here, then, is a problem of transcendent in- 
terest to the conscience still unsolved, which is now abandoned 
by tacit consent, and has passed into the limbo of so many de- 
parted questions, where the ghosts of Nominalism and Realism 
gibber at each other, and the air is heavy with the sighs of those 
who passed their lives in searching into the origin of Evil. 

Here, again, is another problem to a moral conscience of 
transcendent interest — from whence comes moral evil ? 



NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS 1 5 

It is quite as important to the human soul as the origin of the 
world, or the other questions at issue. Indeed, in a moral 
sense, it includes and must determine all the rest. There 
was an epoch in philosophy when this tremendous question 
was earnestly attacked. Manichaeism in all its forms was 
a real answer. But Manichaeism is out of credit ; and yet 
no other answer has taken its place. No one in philosophy 
now discusses the origin of evil, yet no one pretends that the 
problem is solved. It is but another instance of a tran- 
scendent moral problem, about which we have accepted no 
solution, but into which we are weary of inquiring. 

The mere fact that a certain knowledge, if we could get 
it, would be to us of infinite value, is not sufficient reason for 
our continuing to seek after we have lost all hope of finding 
it. How many kinds of inquiry of vital moment to man have 
been silently abandoned in despair? In various ages and 
epochs the hope of forming an individual horoscope has held 
the minds of generations spellbound. It has been thought 
at times that some means might be hit on of foretelling the 
events of life, at least, the great turning-moments of it, or 
its final term. Powerful minds and ingenious generations 
have clung to this hope. Now, the knowledge, if it could be 
obtained, would be of vital importance. There is nothing 
actually impossible in the hope of some approximative fore- 
cast of the duration of life. It concerns each of us wonder- 
fully, as they once said, to get such knowledge, if we can. 
Yet the inquiry has utterly died out, not by being formally 
proved impossible, so much as because nothing ever came 
of it. And all its transcendent importance has not, in an 
altered philosophy, sufficed to give it any longer a hold on 
our thoughts. 

So, too, with the direct influence on human life of the Stars 
and other objects, and all those strange necromantic inquiries 



1 6 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

which have absorbed so much intellectual force. Now, it has 
never been proved, and it never can be proved, that the stars 
or the dead have no influence on human life, or that the flight 
of birds or the croaking of a raven is absolutely unconnected 
with our destinies. The contrary has never been proved; 
but ages have debated in vain what the influence is, and by 
what signs we may know it. If we ever could get to know it, 
it would be a matter to us of transcendent interest. In 
other ages it was the ever-present problem of generations. 
After every failure, they hoped against hope. They would 
be stopped not even by the melting away of all their results. 
The question, they said, was one of such overpowering in- 
terest, the knowledge, if it could be had, was so precious, 
that fail as it might to find, the mind must ever seek. And 
generations of learned pedants lived and died in seeking. 

Again, it is said there is an innate consciousness in man 
that his soul is eternal. Man can never cease, they say, 
to feel interest in his destiny after death, and cannot conceive 
his personality to end with death. As we have just seen, this 
is quite untrue to fact. An interest in the life after death is 
peculiar to certain races and ages. But why is not life before 
birth just as interesting? How do we manage to dwell on 
our post-mundane destiny, and never give a thought to our 
pre-mundane? Yet if soul is conscious of being this im- 
mortal entity, it is, or it should be, as hard for it to realise 
beginning as end — birth as death. The ante-natal con- 
dition of the soul ought to be a question as interesting as its 
post-mortuary condition. It has never been proved that 
the soul has no ante-natal existence. How can we shut out 
this momentous inquiry? An ingenious fabulist described 
a race whose whole spiritual anxieties were centred on the 
life before, not the life after, that on earth. And there is 
nothing in the theory inconsistent with human nature. As 



NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS 1 7 

a matter of fact, vast races have paid at least as much atten- 
tion to the one life as the other. Transmigration indeed is 
at least a consistent handling of the problem of indestructible 
personality, for past life is at least as important to an inde- 
structible entity as its future life. 

The illustrations might be extended indefinitely. At one 
time to one race the paramount problem of spiritual thought 
is the past life of the Soul, at another its future life, at another 
its annihilation. The spiritual problems vary indefinitely 
with each philosophy, each habit of mind, each cast of char- 
acter. What have become of the tremendous problems, on 
which life and thought appeared to depend to the pious gen- 
erations of Aquinas and Ockham, Duns Scotus and Abailard ? 
Mighty intellects and devout souls fought with passion over 
questions which we cannot state without a smile. The primae- 
val element, the harmony of the spheres, the providence of 
the sky, the bounty of the sun, absolute extinction, eternal 
life, the freedom of the will, the absolute existence of ideas, 
the locomotive powers of angels, their independence of phys- 
ical limits, the creative powers of the devil, witchcraft, devil- 
craft, necromancy, and astrology, with fifty other problems, 
have in turn enthralled particular ages. The same process 
holds good for all. Perpetual failure and ever- varied answers 
in time discredit the problems ; they meet with no conclusive 
answers, and at length they cease to be asked. Nor does the 
plea of their transcendent importance, if we knew them, 
preserve any of them as objects of interest long after the con- 
viction has set in that we are not on the road to know them. 

Those, therefore, to whom this conviction has arrived, 
and I again repeat that I have been speaking of no others, 
may put aside these problems with the same sense of relief 
with which they have rejected the answers. The mind has 
an infinite curiosity to solve a vast variety of problems; 



1 8 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

but there is no spell which binds it to one more than to another. 
Nor, fortunately, is it condemned to the Tartarean fate of 
pursuing any task, where it is not conscious of fruits, or of 
asking any question where it has definitely despaired of 
arriving at a permanent answer. 

In short, it is the function of a complete philosophy, and 
one of its highest functions, to determine what inquiries are 
based on solid grounds and may lead to fruitful results. 
It is the part of the logic of the sciences as a whole, and its 
tests are numerous and complex, to condemn problems as 
insoluble, and to stamp inquiries as frivolous. Each branch 
of science from within its own sphere has eliminated a suc- 
cession of idle puzzles, and has limited its field to the real 
and the prolific. The philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, 
the primum mobile, were once the vital problems of ardent 
minds, and in turn have passed into a jest or a by-word. 
When science definitely pronounced that these mighty summa 
bona of knowledge were ideas alien to science, and wholly 
outside of it, they became slowly but surely the toys of the 
pedant. And the plea of the transcendent value of the 
answers, if the problems were solved, was met only with a 
smile. 

It was as if a child were to plead that it would be so delight- 
ful to take a trip to the moon. Perhaps it might; but as 
far as science yet sees, the problem of lunar excursions is 
not within its sphere, and from within its present sphere is 
distinctly insoluble. The plea is now put forward again. 
Philosophy each day reiterates anew that all questions of 
original creation, of personal will in physical law, of incor- 
poreal spirits, are questions wholly alien to its sphere ; nay, 
so far as its resources go, wholly insoluble by it, and indeed 
unintelligible to it. And the plea of transcendent interest, 
the plea that the questions are so vital that they cannot be 



NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS 1 9 

put aside, is as puerile as the plea for an elixir of life, in the 
midst of a sound physiology. 

But whilst philosophy puts by with a smile these childish 
appeals to search into the insoluble, and resolves to select 
its problems for itself, there is a phase of the matter which 
it would do well to acknowledge. The tenacity with which 
these insoluble mysteries cling to and cumber the intellectual 
soil, the passionate yearning of the untaught many after them, 
the vague hankering of so many minds around these barren 
wastes, teaches at least this, that a negative logic is in practice 
not sufficient. The cold sentence of "impassable" or "in- 
soluble" may be graven on portals, round which myriads 
of pilgrims have crowded, as if they opened into a promised 
land ; but it is written in a language they but half understand, 
and they still hang round the entrance they may never pass. 
In a word, in spite of logic and in defiance of science, meta- 
physical mysteries will continue to live until this vague yearn- 
ing is absorbed in a great and strenuous emotion. The only 
true cure for irrational musing over ancient aenigmas is a 
solid faith in a real religion. 

There will always be minds debilitated by hopeless ques- 
tionings, until a passionate devotion of the soul to a real and 
active power becomes the atmosphere of general life. A 
religion of action, a religion of social duty, devotion to an 
intelligible and sensible Head, a real sense of incorporation 
with a living and controlling force, the deliberate effort to 
serve an immortal Humanity — this and this alone can 
absorb the musings and the cravings of the spiritual man. 
The self-reliance of the isolated self is in man so slight, the 
craving after religious communion is in reality so strong, that 
logic and science alone cannot save the soul from superstition 
or despair. Rather than be without a theory which can 
bind the individual close to a moral Providence, which can 



20 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

make his life triumphant over death, man will cling round a 
theory which he knows to be a formula, or even a falsehood. 
And lives will continue to be wasted in listless yearning around 
the Unreal or the Unknowable, until they have been trans- 
figured into a world of social activity under the impulse of 
devotion to a Supreme Power, as humanly real as it is demon- 
strably known. 



II 

THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 

"Notre construction jondamentale de Vordre universel, 
resulte d'un concours necessaire entre le dehors et le dedans.^ — 

AUGUSTE COMTE. 

Wide as is the acceptance which the doctrine of the Rela- 
tivity of Knowledge has received, it may well be doubted if 
we even yet adopt all that it implies. It has been accepted 
by so many schools of thought for their basis, as almost to 
have passed into the sphere of subjects which are little liable 
to question. But on the one hand, this doctrine is itself 
accepted in a great variety of meanings; and on the other, 
it is not often prolonged to its legitimate deductions. Its 
full force is often overlooked in practice. Its philosophical 
complement is but partially apprehended. In the following 
pages it is attempted to follow it to its natural conclusions. 
It is proposed to show that the Relativity of Knowledge, 
rightly understood, puts it beyond the scope of the human 
mind to attain to absolute certainty, to objective truth, or 
to real laws of nature; that the condition of a sound Phi- 
losophy is to ask for nothing but a practical certainty and a 
relative truth. And as a deduction from this, that the only 
harmony of ideas possible to man, is to be found in a Sub- 
jective Synthesis. 

It is very necessary to define accurately the phrases which 
are the first and the last terms of our argument. By the 
Relativity of Knowledge is here meant the doctrine, that all 



22 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

facts are known to us not as they are in themselves, but as 
they appear to us through our sensations. That all our 
reasoning about things is reasoning upon the data of these 
sensations. That we cannot get free from sensations. That 
therefore all knowledge comes to us through the medium 
of the thinking and feeling organism; and is affected by the 
states of the thinking and feeling organism — states which 
we can never look at or ultimately weigh from any indepen- 
dent position, unaffected by these same states. That there- 
fore all knowledge is relative, or dependent on the states 
of the thinking and feeling organism. 

By a Subjective Synthesis is here meant a reference of all 
facts to a harmony of ideas, of which the human point of 
view is the basis. It is to group our ideas round man as a 
centre, and to seek for an organisation of knowledge in the 
bringing it into coincidence with human nature as a whole. 

It is simply impossible to put philosophical doctrines into 
any other but technical language. But as this is a matter 
with deep practical bearings, it may be as well to attempt 
to divest the proposition of any of the " terms of art." Lan- 
guage at all times has been to philosophers "a good servant 
but a bad master." Language is to philosophy what sen- 
sations are to knowledge — the sole medium through which 
it can develop its life, and yet a medium which is continually 
found to be treacherous. To put the argument, however, 
in the simplest language, it may run thus. We know only 
so far as we feel. But we find by experience that we cannot 
always trust our feelings. 'Our senses play us false. And 
then we have no single or irrefragable test by which to know 
when our senses are playing us false. Our knowledge, 
therefore, can never be placed on a basis independent of 
our feelings; and it must be limited by, and conform to, 
the modes of our feelings. But the feelings, sensations, 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 23 

consciousness of man (call it what we will), are inextricably 
bound up with human nature as a whole. Therefore our 
knowledge, our science, our philosophy, can only be per- 
manently organised by being brought into harmonious rela- 
tion with the whole composite human nature. 

With regard to the philosophy of the Absolute (however 
short may be the list of the absolute truths) nothing here 
need be said. Suffice to say that we look on the Absolute 
as a notion which it is abhorrent to the human mind to assert 
of anything whatever. It conveys an idea (like non-exist- 
ent) which neither does nor can correspond to any fact ; an 
idea which the mind cannot, consistently with its own nature, 
predicate of anything. To assert that any conception what- 
ever possesses absolute truth is like attempting to state a 
proposition without the medium of language. 

But those who recognise certainty only in the domain of 
law, though they do not distinctly claim for these laws abso- 
lute certainty, too often appear to claim for them objective 
reality. To such it seems logically provable that an Universe 
really exists externally and independently, and as such can 
be known to us by discovering its absolutely existing laws. 
What science has hitherto done they think is to have proved 
the reality of these laws, to have brought them, like telescopic 
stars, within the range of vision. 

But laws of nature are not objective realities, any more 
than they are absolute truths. In looking on them as ob- 
jective realities, there is indeed no such contradiction in terms ; 
there is nothing abhorrent to the mind in the notion of a thing 
being objective, as there is in its being absolute. On the 
contrary, the mind is forced to deal with things which it 
conceives to be external as being truly objective. But to 
hold that there really are laws of nature existing apart from 
and prior to any conceiving human mind, or such as the 



24 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

human mind can grasp in their real modes, is only a variety 
of the absolute hypothesis. 

All laws of nature are subjective generalisations, the 
threads on which the mind arranges a number of phenomena, 
the impressions received through the senses. The subjective 
generalisations may or may not correspond with (probably 
existing) objective facts. But whether or not they corre- 
spond, and how far, the mind by its nature can never abso- 
lutely know. 

Hence we decline to give the title of absolute truth, not 
only to many propositions respecting subjects on which in- 
nate knowledge is often supposed, — such as the self -con- 
sciousness of existence, the soul, God, right and wrong, and 
the like, — but also to scientific statements respecting physical 
laws of nature, and even as to mathematics. Mathematical 
demonstration is indeed to us the type of all demonstration. 
But mathematical laws are simply conclusions from expe- 
rience more or less abstract. To the non-human mind we 
know not what two and two might make. 

To the old ontological metaphysics there has succeeded 
a new materialist metaphysics, based on assumptions equally 
gratuitous. Metaphysicians at all times have insisted on 
some transcendental truth as the attribute of their hypotheses 
respecting man, matter, and God. There appears to be an 
order of physicists who substitute for this transcendental 
truth an objective reality, equally incapable of proof. I 
know that the Sun attracts the earth ; and I know that man 
has benevolent instincts ; and I know that I exist. And my 
knowledge of all these facts is a knowledge of equal degree of 
certainty; but no one of these propositions can be proved 
to be objective truth, resting on a basis that no conceivable 
evidence could ever destroy. The Sun might repel, and not 
attract the earth; man might conceivably have no purely 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 25 

benevolent instincts; and I might be the cell of an animal 
filling space. And no reasoning can make us absolutely 
certain of the contrary. 

It is easy, but hardly necessary, to distinguish this from 
Scepticism. Philosophical scepticism is the Despair of 
Philosophy. It undertakes to prove that nothing can be 
in the truest sense known. Resorting, like the rest of the 
world, to good sense in practical matters, theoretically Scepti- 
cism denies the existence of ultimate philosophical truth, 
of scientific certainty, of universal and constant laws. The 
common sense philosophy does precisely the contrary. We 
insist as fully as any others on the discoverability of philo- 
sophical truth. Only we say that philosophical truth is 
relative, and that which is called absolute truth is no truth 
at all, but something incongruous to the mind. We base 
everything on scientific certainty; but then we say that 
scientific certainty means only the highest form of practical 
certainty; and that any certainty which pretends to be ab- 
solute, and incapable of being modified by experience, is 
not scientific at all ; not knowledge, but an hallucination. 

We call all scientific knowledge the knowledge of constant 
laws ; but then we say these must be recognised as being the 
conceptions of human minds, and resting only on the relative 
certainty proper to human minds. We have and can have 
no proof that the laws or the things exist outside of the human 
mind in that mode. In a word, we say that true philosophical 
knowledge is not concerned with the relations of things ob- 
jectively to each other as they exist in space, but is concerned 
only with the subjective relations of our impressions received 
from what seem to us to be things. And we should say that 
any knowledge which professed to be something else than this, 
professes to be that which knowledge is not, and cannot be. 

The truth is, that once accept the conception of the rela- 



26 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

tivity of knowledge in its full sense, then the really subjective 
character of the whole of our thoughts about the external 
world, and of our knowledge of the laws of nature follows 
as a matter of course. It is sometimes supposed possible 
to say, "We grant that our knowledge of the external world 
comes to us through our sensations, but when we have 
rightly ordered our sensations, then we come to the true laws 
of nature which produce them. The laws are real laws in 
the things, and we apprehend them just as they are in them- 
selves. We do not pretend to know 'things in themselves,' but 
we do get to know the laws of things as they {i.e. the laws) are." 

A little reflection will show that this is without foundation. 
If we get our knowledge of things solely through the modes 
in which they affect our senses, then what we call laws are 
our own arrangements of our impressions. And, as has been 
effectually shown, laws of nature cannot be ultimately re- 
solved into sets less numerous than our distinguishable sen- 
sations. We may show some connection between the laws 
of heat and those of motion; but the sensation of being 
scorched is not the sensation of moving from one spot to 
another. Whatever may be the true series of categories, 
categories of some kind there are in all philosophy. And, 
except in mere mysticism, our knowledge of the properties 
of heated bodies can never be the same thing as our know- 
ledge of the properties of moving bodies. In a word, all 
rational grouping of our knowledge about external nature 
depends ultimately on the various powers of sensation we 
possess, which are intimately associated with our bodily 
forms. 

Is it rational to suppose that an external Universe is ob- 
jectively cast in these same moulds of our minds — minds 
which so closely depend on our physical powers? If we 
find all our knowledge grouped in sets corresponding with 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 2? 

our different senses, is it not more likely that the grouping is 
that of our own faculties, and not the objective grouping of 
the things? Does the Infinite Universe through Space con- 
form to the modes of mind of the human mites which inhabit 
this planetary speck ? Must not life in other worlds be sub- 
ject to wholly different physical conditions ? Yet if the cate- 
gories of human logic be the true categories of the Universe, 
and the laws of human science be the true laws of a real 
Universe, these categories and these laws would be incon- 
ceivable to beings who had a totally different sensory ap- 
paratus. The philosophers of Sirius might (for aught we 
know) be inflammable gases, rays of light, intelligent aethers. 
How could these gases or aethers assimilate or formulate the 
deductions of modern science ? Suppose that a blade of grass 
or a grain of sand thinks — what is its view of Geometry ? 
In fact, once admit that our system of the laws of nature is 
closely related to our bodily organs, and it is impossible to 
think of these laws of nature as being anything but our 
methods of grouping our sensations. It was once absurdly 
proposed to call laws of nature the thoughts of the Divine 
mind — which is equivalent to attributing to a Divine Being 
heads, eyes, legs, and arms. The truth is, that laws of nature 
are rather — the thoughts of the human mind (based upon 
our own sensations). 

But what is it that this doctrine properly involves? 

The relative philosophy involves a legitimate deduction 
from it, which it does not always receive from those who 
profess that doctrine generally. The philosophy of expe- 
rience through the external senses rejects any notion of an 
absolute knowledge of things in themselves. It professes 
to know phenomena only through the senses, and truths only 
by processes of inference, and to know nothing of absolute 
being. But doing and professing this, we find it sometimes 



28 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

ready to invest its laws of nature with very much the same 
character of absolute truth or objective reality which was 
claimed for the intuitional truths. We hear language about 
physical laws as if they possessed, not, indeed, a Divine, 
but a kind of Material sanction, if not a superhuman, still 
a kind of Cosmical authority, not given to other truth. To 
some minds, for instance, the law of Gravitation seems to 
possess a sanctity formerly reserved to the idea of Creation. 
It is literally supposed to be a reality in itself; an objective 
necessity, which the Universe has imposed on it by Fate; 
something which has a real existence or force of its own. 
Man, they would say, has simply found it out. It possesses, 
they seem to imply, a certainty and a reality, an objectivity 
as truth, totally different from that of the doctrines of Moral- 
ity, for instance. Now all this is simply to substitute one 
fictitious Cosmogony for another, the Revelation of the savans 
for the Revelation of the priests. 

The law of Gravitation is, no doubt, a very general law, 
and rests on an unusual body of evidence, a vast mass of 
verifications, and a rare concensus of testimony. But, after 
all, it is only the best explanation which the human mind can 
give of a number of phenomena. You can never carry 
it beyond a theory, which appears to fit exactly a vast body 
of facts, and has been verified by every available form of test. 
But still it is only a theory, verified so far as the human mind 
can verify its theories. It is an hypothesis which has stood 
all tests, an accepted explanation. Man did not so much 
find it out, as he created or imagined it. Nor is it in the 
least more certain, nor has it more objective reality, than a 
number of moral truths, which most persons would hesitate 
to call absolute truths. Even to call it a universal law is to 
attribute to it an objective reality, beyond our experience, 
for which we have no authority. It has no higher scientific 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 29 

demonstration to rest on, for instance, than the law of social 
progress, even though its area of operation is infinitely more 
vast. It is no more worthy of belief. The latter law is just 
in the same sense a law, just as true, just as authoritative. 
The law of Gravitation is a law, so far as we can see, of uni- 
versal application; but it is not a law of any higher rank 
than the law that man possesses benevolent instincts. 

As was before said, no attempt will be made here to reason 
out in full the doctrine of the relative character of all know- 
ledge, with its various corollaries. It is too wide a subject 
to attempt to give the grounds for it, depending, as they do, 
on the entire mental attitude which has become the habit 
of each particular mind. It is obvious that it rests ultimately 
on the habit of regarding all that can properly be called 
knowledge as a process of inference from impressions of the 
senses. Not much follows if we distinguish "I feel hot" 
from "I know that I feel hot." These are only varieties 
of expression for the same fact. In the way of thinking 
habitual to me, I feel many things ; but I do not know any- 
thing outside of myself of direct consciousness, that is, by 
immediate intuition not drawn from any process of inference 
from my sensations. All knowledge, properly so called, I 
take to be derived by processes of reasoning from data sup- 
plied by the impressions of the senses. 

Thus the double element of doubt in all our knowledge, 
first, as to the correctness of the reasoning process, and 
secondly, as to the trustworthiness of the senses, introduces 
into every idea an inherently relative character; relative 
as respects its answering to any objective reality, and relative 
as respects its logical accuracy. All knowledge in this view 
ultimately rests on the assumption that sensations which have 
frequently been found together will continue to be found 
together, an assumption which the mind is prone to make, 



30 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

but does not intuitively know to be true. All knowledge 
(sensations not being knowledge) is therefore only probable 
truth; of the very highest degree of probability, no doubt; 
in fact, passing into practical certainty, that certainty on 
which we act even in matters of life and death. 

After all, it is not absolute, but is always something short 
of abstract certainty. And all knowledge of the external 
rests on the assumption that sensations are really caused by 
something without us, and are not due to mere changes 
within. And this assumption cannot be logically proved 
either from without or from within. In a word, we take all 
knowledge (on grounds in which, no doubt, all the sensation 
schools of thought agree) to be the picture only which the 
mind fashions out of its impressions ; and a picture which is 
only a highly probable adumbration of the (probably) ex- 
ternal facts. 

But if all schools of the Experience philosophy take this 
as their basis, it may be asked, Why should we insist on this 
here? No doubt, speaking in the abstract, this view is 
accepted without more words by all these schools, but it 
seems important to insist that they bear it in mind in practice. 
In dealing with an ontologist, almost every adherent of the 
phenomenal theory holds this language in its widest sense. 
But in the sphere of special science does he not often tend 
to forget that the law of gravitation, for instance, is a sub- 
jective creation, — a verified hypothesis, — and is not an 
objective law of nature, or an absolute certainty? Does 
he never in practice glide into the tone of mind that these 
physical laws are solid truth, of a kind more tangible to rest 
on than moral or social laws, which are at best but theories ? 
Does he not imagine himself often really exorcising the secrets 
of nature, instead of framing the simplest explanation which 
will satisfy his mind whilst it meets the facts ? 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 3 1 

There is reason to fear that this conception of the rela- 
tivity of all knowledge — entirely accepted as it is in abstract 
speculation by the whole of the Experience school — is 
not equally grasped in the practical work of investigation. 
The truly relative conception of knowledge should make 
us habitually feel that our physical science, our laws, and 
discoveries in nature, are all imaginative creations — poems, 
in fact — which strictly correspond with the limited range 
of phenomena we have before us, therein differing from true 
poems, but which we never can know to be the real modes of 
any external being. We have really no ground whatever 
for believing that these our theories are the ultimate and real 
scheme on which an external world (if there be one) works, 
nor that the external world objectively possesses that organ- 
ised order which we call science. 

For all that we know to the contrary, man is the creator 
of the order and harmony of the universe, for he has imagined 
it. The objective order of the real universe may be (probably 
is) something infinitely more subtle and highly organised than 
our conceptions. The image of it we frame may be as little 
like the truth, as rough an emblem of it, as the picture- 
writing of a savage. Or again, the objective order of the 
universe may be something infinitely more simple, and our 
disparate conceptions may be due not to real differences, but 
to idiosyncrasies of mind. Or (what is most improbable) 
there may be no sort of real order at all outside the mind, 
and our notion of order may be a dream, just as a musician 
standing beneath Niagara might hear some symphony in 
the Babel of waters ; though the music would be in the musi- 
cian, and not in the roar of the cataract. But whether the 
objective order of the universe be something infinitely more 
subtle than our conceptions, or infinitely more simple, or 
there be no order at all, and the idea of an order be a figment 



32 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of our own, or even if there be no objective universe at all, 
it does not in the least concern us to know. In any of these 
cases we are by nature incapable of getting at the objective 
truth ; it is idle to speculate on it, and it is waste of time 
to investigate on the assumption that if we only work hard 
enough and long enough we shall come at the objective har- 
mony at last. 

Now if in all that we know of the world without we must 
draw all our data from the sensations we have ; if all our laws 
of nature are only the mind's modes of grouping the sequences 
and the simultaneities of its sensations ; and if all our sciences 
are only systematic arrangements of these generalisations, 
it follows that the classification of our sciences, their con- 
nections, relations, subdivisions, and rank — in a word, the 
catena of our knowledge — must be determined ultimately 
by our faculties for generalisation, by the capacity of our 
mental system to throw its ideas into organic relations, and 
not by any actual classification which may objectively exist 
in things outside our minds. But every step in our processes 
of forming generalisations brings into play two sets of faculties 
— the one receptive, the other creative ; the observations of 
the facts, and the conceptions by which we give them order. 

Man is a composite organism of correlated elements. 
The intellect is not an independent part of man which func- 
tions by itself. It can only be supplied with material by sen- 
sations, and it is stimulated to action invariably by emotions. 
The simplest meditation has some motive, and some end in 
action. As Aristotle says, mere intelligence (without the 
motive force of a desire) does nothing. The notion of mind 
constructing its own conceptions and systematising know- 
ledge independently is an idle fable. The mind is capable 
of no sustained and coherent effort except when it works in 
connection and harmony with emotions and energies — i.e. 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 33 

with the human being as a whole. But that, again, brings 
into play the whole range of the conditions in which man is 
placed, and the whole range of the moral faculties he pos- 
sesses. Man, in a word, is a system in himself, and his mind 
cannot normally work except as part of that system, and in 
complete accord with it. And his mind cannot effectually 
group its conceptions in any coherent form, unless that order 
or harmony of conceptions is in true correspondence with the 
order and harmony of the human being in all its relations, 
material, active, affective, and intellectual. That is the Sub- 
jective Synthesis. 

What is the practical utility of the idea here maintained? 
It is that all independent efforts to wrest her secrets from 
Nature objectively, and ever more and more secrets, in the 
general hope that some day all those secrets will unfold and 
group themselves in their real order and harmony, as they 
exist in nature — all such efforts are in vain. All efforts 
must start from the point of view of the human being who is 
inquiring, from the intellectual and moral wants of the man. 
The thing required, the only thing possible, is to bring the 
man's symphony of conceptions into more and more com- 
plete coincidence with his impressions. To catalogue, and 
co-ordinate, and re-distinguish the impressions for ever, will 
never lead to anything if the organising idea be forgotten. 
Out of the multiplicity of impressions will come chaos, and 
not knowledge. If the impressions do correspond with 
realities, and if the external realities do contain their own 
order, both of which we must believe, but cannot know, still 
we cannot ever get to know that order. The dispersive, 
the analytic method of study can never give us knowledge 
— for this is an organised order of ideas. If there be an or- 
ganised order of things without, the mind cannot compre- 
hend it ; and if we neglect the conditions of an organised 

D 



34 



PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 



order of ideas within, we shall never get at any order at all. 
There are profound meanings in Bacon's aphorism — "The 
subtlety of nature far exceeds the subtlety of man's mind." 

The notion from which we start — all knowledge is an in- 
ference from sensations — introduces a certain dualism, 
which extends throughout philosophy: the observations of 
phenomena, on the one hand; the mental inference from 
these observations, on the other; or, observations and con- 
ceptions. Knowledge, in the truest sense, is the perfect 
equipoise and correlation of these two. When one or other 
is developed out of proportion to its fellow, the balance is 
lost, and knowledge is pro tanto diminished. In one form 
of philosophy — indeed, more or less in all the theological 
and metaphysical forms — the conceptions are developed at 
the expense of the observations. Dogmas, theories, and cos- 
mogonies are created, and no corresponding systematisation of 
observed facts is accomplished. There is no true verification. 
Philosophy and science then consist of raw hypotheses, 
mental creations, which do not fit all the known sensations. 

There is the opposite error — and we are in the midst of 
it now. The facts are multiplied, and observations are ex- 
aggerated out of all proportion to the symmetry of the con- 
ceptions, without which they must remain chaotic. Of 
course the simplest observation implies some sort of hypoth- 
esis ; but observations can be carried on in the almost entire 
absence of any true and complete harmony of general con- 
ceptions. Without this they are worthless, and even inju- 
rious. The possible facts, the conceivable observations, 
are simply infinite. A withered leaf might afford observa- 
tions which it would occupy a lifetime to record. Man 
could no more catalogue all the facts in any single branch of 
science than a caterpillar could construct an exhaustive 
natural history of this planet. 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 35 

Where facts around us are infinite, simply to collect the 
facts is simply to count the grains of sand on the sea-shore, 
or the breakers as they roll to land. A myriad years of such 
study cannot give knowledge; and the more of such facts 
are collected, the more difficult it becomes ever to give order 
to the chaos. Nay, the thin and inorganic hypotheses which 
may serve as the ground even of such observations leave 
the matter no better. Discordant hypotheses, not capable 
of being built up into the stately fabric of knowledge, are 
as great an encumbrance as the mass of facts themselves. 
Science pursued on this objective method still remains, and 
ever will remain, rudis indigestaque moles. Partial, disparate, 
independent conceptions of laws (however good in the in- 
fancy of science) choke the ground of philosophy in its ma- 
turity. When the great work of organising our knowledge 
is in full operation, all observations become retrograde that 
are not vitalised by the organic conceptions of the living 
human whole. 

The function of true philosophy is to avoid equally the 
error of exaggerating the part of the conceptions or the use- 
fulness of the observations. A purely subjective philosophy 
ends in a dream. A purely objective science ends in a chaos. 
The function of philosophy is to carry on simultaneously 
the double task by co-ordinate methods; to order the con- 
ceptions in due accord with the collecting of the observa- 
tions. The phenomena must be selected, co-ordinated, 
classified; whilst the corresponding conceptions are as- 
sociated and organised. And just as those conceptions be- 
come vicious, which fail, on proper tests, to meet the obser- 
vations, or which conflict with them; so those observations 
are worthless which lie out of the field of the organising con- 
ceptions, and jar upon their symmetry. And this symmetry, 
be it remembered, is not purely intellectual, but must in- 



36 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

elude a harmony of the whole of the powers of man in relation 
to his external necessities. When the whole system of man's 
observations corresponds with the entire system of human 
nature, a true harmony is established. And this is a sub- 
jective synthesis, in which man is (philosophically) the centre 
of his world. 

Illustrations of all things are dangerous in philosophy, but 
I am tempted to risk one as an explanation. An aphis, or an 
ant, on a rose-bush in a garden, a house-fly in a room, might 
conceivably be endowed with intellect equal or much su- 
perior to man's. The aphis, ant, and fly would construct 
its theories, its laws of nature, its sciences; the gardener's 
hose or spade would form its seasons, showers, earthquakes. 
Some theories fairly meeting the facts of the garden and the 
room the aphis and the fly might construct, but how ludi- 
crously short of the vaster laws of the earth ! Yet even there 
a sensible aphis or fly, wisely renouncing the search after an 
objective theory of its universe, might make its brief life 
more complete by observations relatively within its powers, 
and suggested by its wants. 

To what does this tend? To sum up the argument, it 
runs thus: The belief that our knowledge of the external 
world is derived by a process of inference from data supplied 
by the impressions of the senses, involves the relativity of 
knowledge in its full sense. From the sources of our know- 
ledge, it always remains a system of mental pictures. And 
it is impossible for us to find; we must create our synthesis 
of nature. And as a painter to paint a picture must create 
his own composition, and however accurate, no photographic 
copying of parts can succeed in making a composition, so the 
thinker in his closest study of phenomena must hold on by 
the subjective synthesis which has been created by human 
philosophy. And this, the true method, condemns the 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 37 

breaking up of subjects into independent studies, for myriads 
of photographers cannot make a picture, without a subjective 
conception to group the details around. It condemns all 
dispersive investigations; for whatever be the real order of 
the external, this cannot be revealed as such to the human 
thought. It condemns all studies of inorganic matter not 
guided by studies of organic matter, and all studies of or- 
ganic matter not guided by studies of moral nature; for 
nothing is true knowledge that is not relative to the human 
nature in its complex whole, that does not tend to perfect 
the synthesis within man; and this synthesis is not merely 
intellectual, but is moral also. 

Such, as I understand it, is the logical deduction from 
relativity of knowledge, and the origin of knowledge in in- 
ferences from the data presented by the senses. The con- 
tinued and systematic specialising of study, the purely in- 
tellectual pursuit of truth as truth, and the seeking in the 
phenomena of nature for objective and real laws of nature, 
must ultimately rest for its justification on a conception of 
an objective order of things discoverable by man. But this 
is only a form of ontology, an attempt to get at things as they 
are, and is consistent only with a belief in some form of the 
philosophy of the absolute. The reign of metaphysical 
problems must last whilst we admit the possibility of abso- 
lute certainty, and the attainment of objective truth. Hence, 
all such (of whom the pure specialist, be the specialism 
physical or moral, is the type) are radically unable to hold 
their ground against the ontologist, the intuitionist, and even 
the theologian. On the contrary, they are at bottom the real 
feeders of all the metaphysical schools of thought. And 
since they seek to know nature as she is, they are not of the 
Relative Philosophy at all, but are in the truest sense Ontolo- 
gists. 



38 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

It is obvious that this argument is purely addressed to those 
who deduce all knowledge from experience, and that it does 
not touch any opinion resting on an intuitional basis. What 
have we to say to these? We must freely confess nothing, 
or rather, nothing but one practical suggestion, which we do 
not venture to call a philosophical argument. It would be 
idle in the extreme to attack a view which rests on the whole 
consensus of logical method which each mind adopts for 
itself, on the set of a vast current of ideas. Let us offer the 
homage of respect for a system of thought which we cannot 
share, but the vitality, if not the potency, of which we pro- 
foundly recognise. And the only true respect for it which 
we can show is to avoid the appearance of narrow criticism or 
partial skirmish. When men of high moral and intellectual 
power assure us that they find rest, unity, and fruit in intui- 
tional truth, and in innate conceptions about themselves, 
their own natures, the external world, its origin, its construc- 
tion, and maintenance, the future state of what they conceive 
to be some part of, or the essence of, themselves, their duty 
here, and a sense of right and wrong, far be it from us to 
dispute the value and reality of this knowledge. It would 
be quite contrary to our own principles to attempt to prove 
their conclusions mistaken. 

If we do not adopt them, it is not because we believe them 
to be false, but because they fail to interest us. We can get 
no practical good out of them ; and to us they lie out of the 
sphere of connected thought. The one practical suggestion 
which is all that we have to submit to any disciple of any 
intuitional school is this. If this kind of knowledge or this 
kind of thought be really inborn in human nature, if these 
problems indeed must be asked by the human mind, why 
is not this knowledge found in all men ; how can these prob- 
lems be habitually absent from any one mind? Of course, 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 39 

we mean trained minds, men mentally and morally compe- 
tent to test this question gravely. One instance of a mind, 
which on these questions is a real blank, one instance of a 
cultivated man who never did, and cannot, feel any interest 
in these problems, ought to be decisive on the point. One 
such case ought to establish that these abysmal questions 
of theology and metaphysics are not implanted in the fibres 
of human nature, but are artificial, just like the question of 
the mediaeval schoolmen if angels could exist in vacuo. 

The practical objection to the intuitionist is simply this. 
We have amongst us those who fail to detect in themselves the 
sparks or germs of such knowledge, who do not acknowledge 
any such problem as ever present to them, save as the vagary 
of an idle hour. To them (and some of them have been 
thought to be well equipped both on intellectual and moral 
grounds for the task, men learned once in all the learning 
of the Egyptians), to them, these problems, as to how this 
(apparently) external world came about, or in what kind of 
way, other than that of this sentient life, the thinking thing 
may continue to exist, are as the problem if angels can exist 
in vacuo — problems which they neither ask, nor solve, nor 
busy about, nor think of, except with a smile. It is not the 
particular answers, but the questions which are matters of 
indifference. The only whispering which ever makes itself 
heard within them, when these topics are suggested for notice, 
is that of the homely phrase, — Never mind. They would 
as lief think of speculating about the soul — past, present, 
or future — as of speculating by what mode of death one 
may come to die, and in what grave, if it be in a grave, one's 
body may come to lie. We shall all know in time. 

There are two provisos with which it may be well, before 
ending, to guard our meaning. It will be readily understood 
that in insisting on a really subjective synthesis — that is, 



40 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

the regarding of systematic knowledge as a mental creation, 
dealing with sensations, the internal grouping of phenomena, 
and not as objective truth and real order of external things — 
we do not for an instant accept as knowledge unverified 
hypotheses or conceptions which have not been shown by 
scientific demonstration strictly to correspond with the im- 
pressions of sense. No theory, however plausible, belongs 
to knowledge until it is shown to be capable of fitting all 
the accessible phenomena. 

It may be asked, What is the test of demonstration ? How 
are hypotheses to be verified? There is no absolute test. 
We never are in the abstract certain that experience may not 
modify our conceptions. And there is no single test. The 
sciences are many and disparate; each has its own appro- 
priate tests, its own method, its peculiar logic. If we are 
asked what is the real canon of sound demonstration, we 
must answer, It is found in the general logic of the sciences, 
which is a vast and composite creation. To look for any 
single and final test of proof in science is as foolish as to ex- 
pect such a test in practical life. Science is only the sys- 
tematic form of spontaneous good sense. 

Secondly, it will be as readily understood that in insisting 
on the relativity of knowledge to the extent of denying any 
mathematical proof that there is any objective existence, or 
that there really are any objective laws, we do in the practical 
workshop of Philosophy accept both notions fully. That 
logic never can establish the reality of an external world is 
incontestable. Whether in the Idealism of Berkeley, or in 
the scepticism of Hume, there is no logical answer to their 
reasoning. The objective reality of the world cannot be 
proved. It will be seen that in the foregoing pages, whilst 
this doctrine is admitted, an objective world of phenomena 
is constantly assumed. As a philosophical artifice, indeed, 



THE SUBJECTIVE SYNTHESIS 4 1 

and whilst dealing with the absolute schools, we may very 
fairly use the profoundly luminous argument of the idealists 
to establish the inherently relative character of all our ideas. 
It is one of the many grounds on which the doctrine rests. 
All ideas, all thought, all knowledge, are relative, and there- 
fore in one sense subjective. 

But having once, as a preliminary axiom of thought, es- 
tablished the complete relativity of all ideas, we cease to 
follow out a theory which would become a barren puzzle 
if pressed into active service. Admitting that logic cannot 
prove an objective world to exist, we rest nothing on that 
doctrine, except as it assists us in establishing the relativity 
of all knowledge. But all ideas once firmly recognised as 
being relative, the grand eternal contrast of all Philosophy 
comes in, of the / and the Not I, the strictly subjective, and the 
apparently objective, our ideas of what we feel to be ourselves, 
our ideas of what appears to be without us. And this grand 
dualism of thought is the condition of all reasoning and all 
knowledge. We must reason and act as if there were an ex- 
ternal world, and as if there were, and we could know, general 
and constant laws. They offer a boundless and a fruitful field, 
capable of taxing and rewarding all our intelligence and all 
our energies. But everything depends on our recognising 
as the substratum of our philosophy, that all knowledge is 
relative; relative in respect of its having no absolute cer- 
tainty, and relative as respects its harmonising with the 
mental and moral nature of man. 



Ill 

SYNTHESIS 

There are a few, a very few, technical terms, of classical 
and scientific origin, which Positivism must at any cost force 
upon public attention till they become quite familiar and 
natural. Every scheme of thought which presents new ideas 
that it seeks to popularise must resort to a certain number 
of new terms. All religious systems have done this: all 
philosophical and sociological movements, and every new 
school of opinion; even a little knot of aesthetes who affect 
the cult of the Decadent — all have their symbolic phrases. 

The Christian religionists have inundated language, 
even popular language, with such terms as Atonement, Tran- 
substantiation, and Prevenient Grace; till children come to 
talk about Predestination, Baptism, Confirmation, and Sacra- 
ments. Indeed the Christian religion could not be taught 
or worked without the use of such highly technical terms as 
Sacrament, Trinity, and Grace. The evolutionists have 
forced on the public an entire lexicon of special terms, so 
that Mr. Herbert Spencer's philosophy would seem to an 
unlearned reader of the last generation to be a book written 
in a learned and unknown tongue. The economists, 
the socialists, the artists, have their peculiar indispensable 
phrases. It is a practice which easily becomes an affectation : 
but up to a certain degree it is unavoidable. Nothing could 
be sillier than Mr. Ruskin's obscurantist horror of scientific 
terms, driving him to use fantastic and unintelligible Biblical 

42 



SYNTHESIS 43 

and poetical tropes to express, in an obscure rigmarole, an 
idea which can be accurately connoted by a beautiful Greek 
compound. Positivism does not require more than a dozen 
of such terms (and no one of them is strange to scientific 
thinkers) ; but these few must be made quite familiar. The 
most important, the most indispensable, of these is Synthesis. 

Not that either the term, synthesis, or the thing it denotes, 
are at all novel or strange. It is simply that Positivism must 
make the term itself as familiar to the unlearned as sacra- 
ment and grace ; and that it has to give a very greatly increased 
force to the paramount value of Synthesis. Indeed, Synthesis 
is almost Religion; and, if it is not quite equivalent to Re- 
ligion, it covers the intellectual and theoretical side of Reli- 
gion, and is Religion, so far as Religion is not expression or 
action. Positivism claims to be a scientific Philosophy is- 
suing forth into a moral and religious scheme for the entire 
conduct of life — public and private, personal and social. 
It aims at establishing a permanent harmony between thought, 
feeling, and action. That is to say, its key-note is the need 
for some complete Synthesis of life. This means organic 
principles adequate to weld into one common life our in- 
tellectual, our affective, and our active propensities. The 
anarchy and the failures we see around us arise from this : 
that our science is not inspired by religion, that our religion is 
not founded on science, that our conduct is imperfectly guided 
either by religion or by science. The paramount conception 
of Auguste Comte is the Synthesis, or harmonising all these 
sides of human life. 

Since its field is so wide, Positivism is forced to deal with 
disparate topics side by side and on a common scheme. 
This forms the main difficulty which it has to encounter, 
and explains the antipathy which it arouses in the specialist 
schools of the day. Our age is one of Analysis — of fissipa- 



44 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

rous research. The Positive scheme is a search for Synthesis 

— a combination of knowledge with sympathy and with 
action. The central idea of Positivism is simply this : that, 
until our dominant convictions can be got into one plane with 
our deepest affections and also with our practical energies 

— until our most sacred emotions have been correlated with 
our root beliefs and also with our noblest ambition, — that is, 
until one great object is ever present to intellect, and to heart, 
and to energy — all at once — human life can never be 
healthy or sound. 

They entirely mistake it who suppose Positivism to be 
merely a novel mode of satisfying man's inherent craving 
for some object of Devotion — who think that its aim is to 
replace God by Humanity and to substitute human Saints 
for Christ — that it is, as some jesters have said, an Athe- 
istical kind of Salvation Army. That is mere ribaldry. All 
external acts of worship are to the rational Positivist secon- 
dary details and variable conventions, as to which they are 
content to wait. No scheme of personal Salvation in Heaven 
can be compared with a synthesis of practical life on this 
earth. 

Nor are they less mistaken who suppose that the end of 
Positivism is to clear up some philosophical conundrums: 
to tabulate the sciences to the satisfaction of learned spe- 
cialists, or to arrive at useful truths in a new and compendious 
way. It entirely adopts the great maxim of the first of phi- 
losophers — " not to know — but to act." This is the practical 
motto of Positivism as it was of Aristotle's ethical system. 

And it would be as great an error to suppose Positivism 
to be merely a new phase of Socialism, a mere social economy 
of any kind ; that its business is to supersede existing society 
by another social organisation warranted to remedy all present 
evils, and to found a social millennium. Positivism insists 



SYNTHESIS 



45 



that our social economy is the result of defective knowledge, 
neglect of moral and religious teaching, and anarchical habits 
of egoistic life. And the only remedy is the consensus of an 
organised philosophy, a reformed morality, and a permanent 
religion. 

Positivism takes up each of these subjects in turn : spiritual, 
scientific, political; but it mainly insists on a convergence 
of them all — i.e. on a synthesis. Reformers treat the organ- 
ism — man, and the organism — society, as if men were 
nothing but brain, others as if they were nothing but feeling, 
others as if human life were only action. They treat society 
as if its sole business were knowledge, or politics, or morality, 
or industry, or art, or worship. All current, political, all 
social, all religious movements extant are sectional : avowedly 
concerned with one side of life. 

Positivism aims at being comprehensive, complete, and 
synthetic. It is at once a scheme of Education, a form of 
Religion, a school of Philosophy, a method of Government, 
and a phase of Socialism. To define it in terms of any one of 
these, or to describe it as being any one more than the others, 
is to mislead. There is no royal road to its understanding. 
It cannot be put in a nutshell, or analysed on a sheet of paper. 
It must grow into our conscience and sink into our conceptions 
by reflection and by experience. Its strength lies in the cor- 
respondence of its parts, and its aptness to meet the most 
different conditions; in its power to calm the conflict within 
man's composite nature ; and in its mastery over the storms 
which sweep across our intricate society. It can be set forth 
only by presenting it in a great variety of contrasted aspects ; 
and its power to enforce conviction on widely different minds, 
resides not in any single effect that it produces, but in the 
convergence which it evolves out of heterogeneous and chaotic 
elements. This it docs by the magic of synthesis. 



IV 

THE THREE GREAT SYNTHESES 

The controversies which have been aroused by Mr. Bal- 
four's Foundations oj Belief — especially the reply by Mr. 
Herbert Spencer in the Fortnightly Review 1895 — afford 
a convenient text for stating again in the light of modern phil- 
osophical discussion the Positivist scheme of philosophic 
Synthesis, or co-ordination of ultimate principles. There are 
now before the world three such dominant schemes, each in 
its way covering the whole field of religious or synthetic phi- 
losophy. Each of the three has been sufficiently set forth in 
recent discussions. The three syntheses are : — 

1. The Absolute Theological synthesis — i.e. the current 
orthodox religious philosophy, which, for the occasion, is 
sufficiently represented by Mr. Balfour. 

2. The Absolute Scientific synthesis — i.e. the evolutionary 
scheme of the Universe — which is adequately represented 
by Mr. Spencer, its principal exponent and author. 

3. The Relative Scientific synthesis — i.e. the human and 
planetary scheme of religious philosophy on the basis of posi- 
tive science, which is exclusively taught by Auguste Comte. 

These three syntheses do really cover the whole field of 
debate ; and all the varieties of religious philosophy may be 
brought under one or other of these heads. No doubt the 
Absolute Theology has infinite gradations from that of the 
Pope to Dr. Martineau's, from that of Islam to that of Mr. 
Stead. But they all agree in this — that there is some Su- 

46 



THE THREE GREAT SYNTHESES 47 

preme Will intelligible to Man and in contact with Man, by 
whom the entire Universe and all things in it physical, mental, 
and moral, have been from the first ordained, and are, and 
to infinite time will be, daily co-ordinated and ordered. 
Again, the Absolute Scientific synthesis covers all the at- 
tempts to explain, on scientific bases, the reign of uniform 
Law throughout the Universe and the co-ordination of things 
within it. The Positive Synthesis covers all schemes which 
deliberately limit philosophy and religion to Man and this 
planet, and seek for a merely relative co-ordination of our 
knowledge and our conduct in the sphere of things that Man 
can come to know, and to the course of conduct which is 
useful to man. 

There cannot indeed be more than these three general 
syntheses in the widest sense. For, though there is a Meta- 
physical Theology, and possibly a Metaphysical Science, 
Metaphysics, or quasi-scientific hypotheses in an unverified 
condition, are merely forms of compromise, hybrids, bastard 
types, as the Athanasian Creed would put it, touching Theol- 
ogy as dispensing with proof, and touching science as pre- 
tending to its terms. Absolute and Relative cover the whole 
field of logic; and so also do Theology and Science, if in 
Theology we include all arbitrary hypotheses, and in Science 
we include all forms of positive demonstration. There can 
hardly be a relative theological synthesis of a serious kind. 
For, though negroes and esoteric Buddhists might invent 
a system of divine emanations and decrees limited to this 
earth, or even to particular spots and families, such crude 
superstitions could hardly be reckoned as a philosophy. 
There are — and there can only be — three great typical 
forms of general synthesis: fi) The Absolute Theology of 
God or Gods creating and ruling the Universe; (2) Some 
Absolute scheme of scientific generalisations pervading and 



48 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

explaining the Universe; (3) The Relative Synthesis of 
positive science limited in space to the earth and our system, 
limited in time to the historic record, and limited in aim to 
human conditions and requirements. 

It is not proposed now to discuss Mr. Balfour's book — 
The Foundations 0} Belie} — except as it presents in a con- 
venient form the average type of the looser theology. Mr. 
Spencer, like Professor Huxley, like Dr. Martineau, has shown 
what a mere parody of his opinions that book offers to the 
world under the name of Naturalism. Mr. Balfour is a 
most graceful writer, a most ingenious debater, and a highly 
interesting personality of great subtlety and wide culture. 
But his philosophic level is that of a popular preacher in a 
University pulpit. As such we may fairly take him as a really 
authoritative type of modern theological adaptation. Mr. 
Spencer had no difficulty in showing how completely Mr. 
Balfour misconceived the Evolution Synthesis, how loose is 
his own logic in attack, and how vague, and yet preposterous, 
are the hypotheses which he calls "the certitudes of religion." 
Mr. Spencer gave us a complete exposure of "Mr. Balfour's 
Dialectics"; but Mr. Spencer's own Absolute Synthesis 
has been abundantly explained in his elaborate and volu- 
minous works, and we shall find no real difficulty in stating his 
conception of Evolution as the pervading law of the Universe. 

Mr. Balfour is master of a style of really rare beauty and 
charm, and his interesting mode of eloquence is curiously 
adapted to his mysterious and mighty theme. But the vague- 
ness inseparable from this type of eloquence makes it some- 
times difficult to grasp his meaning. Almost every idea he 
offers us is clothed in metaphor or epigram — the epigram 
being bright, and the metaphor being suggestive, graceful, 
and at times almost rising to the level of poetry. But in 
philosophy metaphors are dangerous resources. It was said 



THE THREE GREAT SYNTHESES 49 

of John Austin that he weeded every metaphor out of his 
Jurisprudence until his sentences became repulsively dry. 
Mr. Balfour's sentences are redolent and brilliant with flowers 
of metaphor, until we lose sight of the ground beneath them. 
And in this allusive style it is not quite evident what the 
terms exactly mean. He uses ''natural science" as if it 
covered sociology, psychology, and even philosophy; he 
uses "phenomena" as if they were limited to the facts of 
physical nature; and he uses "perception" as if it meant 
sometimes the report of the senses and sometimes the sole 
instrument of scientific knowledge. 

As becomes a professional "doubter," he makes so profuse 
a use of negatives that it is at times difficult to disentangle 
them, and now and then it looks as if he said the exact con- 
trary of what he means. As in Mr. Henry James's critical 
essays, we have to count the negatives, in order to see if they 
are odd or even in number. Here is a case. Mr. Balfour 
writes (p. 292) — "It must not be supposed that I intend to 
deny, either that it is our business to 'reconcile' all beliefs, 
so far as possible, into a self-consistent whole, or that, because 
a perfectly coherent philosophy cannot as yet be attained, 
it is, in the meanwhile, a matter 0) complete indifference how 
many contradictions and obscurities we admit into our pro- 
visional system." What does this mean? Mr. Balfour 
must not be supposed to deny, i.e., he affirms two things — 
the first, that we have to "reconcile" beliefs — the second 
he surely means not to affirm, but to disclaim. As the words 
stand, he asserts, that it is a matter of complete indifference 
to him how many contradictions and obscurities he admits 
into his system ! This sentence is plainly a merely verbal 
slip. Or that must mean or to affirm that. But when one 
uses a tangle of negatives unintended results will arise. 
Many of his readers will agree with this curious confession 



50 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of his : but does it lie in Mr. Balfour's mouth to make so 
monstrous an admission of confusion and fogginess? This 
is indeed the scepticism which he so oddly puts into the mouth 
of " Naturalism," and hence of Positivism, when he says 
(p. 299) "I cannot either securely doubt my own certainties 
or be certain about my own doubts. 11 This is verily the 
Doubter's nemesis ! 

The essence of Mr. Balfour's argument is one which has 
great interest for Positivists, and indeed is an argument 
which they have constantly employed to a very different end. 
He says that, since " things in themselves" are unknowable 
and even unthinkable, since the "Absolute" and the "In- 
finite" are beyond our grasp, — since the law of universal 
causation cannot help us to a Primal Cause, and cannot prove 
itself, — since the Spencerian Synthesis rests on a sublime 
background of Unknowable, — since the Darwinian evolu- 
tion cannot explain the origin of Duty, or of Beauty, or of 
Devotion, — since every Absolute Synthesis rests ultimately 
on a mystery, — since science breaks down in the task of 
rewriting the Book of Genesis and of expounding the origin 
of the Universe, — since atheism, materialism, and monism 
fail to account for the evolution of all that is noblest in the 
human soul — why not admit (says Mr. Balfour) that the 
hypothesis of a Creator, the possibility of a Providence, and 
the divine entity of a human soul "without body parts, or pas- 
sions," may be mysteries no more difficult to swallow than 
Mr. Spencer's Unknowable or Mr. Darwin's evolution of 
morality? And they are certainly far more soothing to the 
truly religious spirit of good Churchmen. And having come 
to this comfortable conclusion of "Scepticism all round," 
Mr. Balfour goes down to Westminster and fights tooth and 
nail for that odious remnant of sacerdotal bigotry, the epis- 
copal Church in Wales ! 



THE THREE GREAT SYNTHESES 5 1 

Now this elaborate argument of Mr. Balfour's as to the 
insoluble mystery of ultimate ideas and of Primal Causes, 
as to the confusion involved in any materialistic origin of the 
Universe, is not at all new. Mr. Balfour has restated the 
old dilemmas with grace, wit, and subtlety, although he has 
not strengthened them a point. But the curious thing is, 
that the entire set of these objections, most of which have 
divided philosophers for a century, was first cast into an 
organic and consistent scheme, and was first made the basis 
of a new philosophy by no one but by Auguste Comte himself. 
It is now just eighty-five years since Comte first published 
his scheme of a new Positive Philosophy — which rested 
as its basis on the futility of the metaphysical, and materialis- 
tic solutions of the Universe which Mr. Balfour now describes 
as the creed of Naturalism, and of Positivism. Whether 
these solutions or any of them are the creed of "Naturalism" 
does not concern us. True Positivism (much as he may be 
surprised to learn it) rests upon a profound sense of the 
futility of those very dogmas of which Mr. Balfour has again 
very cleverly made mince-meat. 

The difference between us, however, is this. Philosophic 
Doubt "all round" drives Mr. Balfour into the arms of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury and the transcendent "contra- 
dictions and obscurities" — of the Athanasian creed. There 
he can revel in "complete indifference" to reason and to 
sense, neither "securely doubting his own certainties," nor 
being "certain about his own doubts." It drove Comte, 
and it drives us, to say — Away with these metaphysical 
conundrums, with these impotent theogonies and geogonies, 
with all these yearnings after a knowledge of the Universe, 
and with all these Absolute philosophies of the All as it is, 
and the Infinite Cause and Ruler of the All — and let us 
work out man's salvation upon earth with all the real know- 



52 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

ledge about it and about himself which can be proved by 
practical logic to give us definite results so far as we yet 
know ! That is the Positivist syllogism upon the basis of 
the very premises that we are ready to accept quite as fully 
as Mr. Balfour can. Philosophic Doubt as to " things in 
themselves" and Absolute Causes leads Mr. Balfour to give 
a " provisional assent" to theological hypotheses as not more 
extravagant than those of Mr. Herbert Spencer. It leads 
us to give a "positive assent" to what philosophy, science, 
and experience can show us to be proved about "things as 
they are," about this world and man as we find them. And 
we prefer this positive knowledge and these practical efforts 
to merely comfortable hopes and the venerable Mahatmas 
revealed to Jews and Syrians two thousand years ago. 

Comte objected to Ontology in all its forms so violently that 
he used the term Metaphysician as a reproach, and he said 
the philosophy of a Congo negro showed more good sense 
than all the metaphysics of Germany. This may have been an 
extreme epigram ; but such a book as Mr. G. H. Lewes's His- 
tory of Philosophy follows much the same line in its criticism 
of all ontological speculation as does Mr. Balfour. Now, Mr. 
Lewes's criticism of Ontology leads him directly to be satisfied 
with the Positive Philosophy ; and his later works give a more 
or less positivist answer to the various problems of ontology, 
causation, and ultimate grounds of belief, now treated by Mr. 
Balfour. But Mr. Lewes's solution is very far from being an 
appeal to rally round the Church, which is what Mr. Balfour's 
book practically ends in being, but it is, that we must learn to 
acquiesce in the Unknowable Infinite and the insoluble aenig- 
mas of all beginnings and of all ends, including those of Earth 
and of Man, not as being the field of Religion, but as the cir- 
cumambient aether, in which the solid mass of man's knowledge 
floats. That is in the main the Positivist conclusion. 



THE THREE GREAT SYNTHESES 53 

Mr. Balfour's whole argument comes to this : — that as the 
heterodox dogmas have their own dilemmas, why need we 
stumble over the dilemmas of orthodoxy? But how feeble and 
how treacherous a weapon is this ! That is what Rome has al- 
ways said to the Protestant — the Trinity is so big a mystery, 
why need you gasp over Transubstantiation ? The Trinita- 
rian says to the Unitarian — If you admit a Creator, why not 
admit an Incarnation ? The Christian says to the Deist, Until 
you have explained the origin of your God, you need not parade 
difficulties about Miracles. Everybody can use the same argu- 
ment, everybody does use it, — Jews, Musulmans, Buddhists, 
Mahdists, Medicine-men, Spookists and Theosophists — all say 
— Our mystery is not more mysterious than Christian Incar- 
nations or scientific Unknowables. Mr. Stead and Mrs. Besant 
say — If you cannot explain the mystery of revelation, why do 
you mock at telepathy and Mahatmas ? Why indeed ? 

It is a very queer argument on which to base the Christian 
creed, that, as we may have grounds for doubting the objec- 
tive reality of an external world, may not the creeds be hardly 
more doubtful? Like a new Athanasius, Mr. Balfour rises 
up to say, " Since there is not one incomprehensible, but 
three (and perhaps many) incomprehensibles, not one un- 
created, but three (and perhaps many) uncreated, the logi- 
cal objections to an incomprehensible and to an uncreated 
now fall to the ground !" He, therefore, that will be saved 
must feel it "a matter of complete indifference how many 
contradictions and obscurities" he admits into his creed. 
But because many irrational answers have been given to 
irrational questions, it is not open to the rational man there- 
fore to adopt that one of the answers which he finds to be most 
soothing. The Positivist reply is, Leave the irrational ques- 
tion alone, and occupy your energies and thoughts with 
practicable and rational problems. 



54 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

As in things intellectual Mr. Balfour falls back upon gen- 
eral scepticism, so in things practical his mainstay is found 
in a sub-cynical pessimism. Apart from the purposes of 
creation, mankind is "a race with conscience enough to 
feel that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is 
insignificant." This earth will ere long be a lifeless void, 
and everything will be as if it had never been. What can 
any one of us do that is truly useful or permanent? Why 
should we strive in vain ; what can matter any earthly achieve- 
ment ? And so forth in the strain of Ecclesiastes the Preacher 
— Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity ! This language was 
very well in the fin de Steele Wertherism of an Alexandrian 
Jew, or in the Imitation of a mediaeval monk. But how oddly 
it sits upon the leader of His Majesty's Opposition ! If the 
human race is so vile, and human effort so futile, why not 
retire into a hermitage, weep and pray till God vouchsafe 
to take us to Himself? Even Irish Nationalists can hardly 
be viler than the rest of us. If the human race be so con- 
temptible, why should we care for our country, our family, or 
even this Empire? If it will be "all the same a hundred 
years hence," why should statesmen, preachers, thinkers, 
toil and moil at all? If man be this utter Yahoo and earth 
this speck of dust, why should Mr. Balfour wear himself 
nightly in doing the dirty work of Irish landlords and London 
aldermen, and in battling for the privileges of Prelacy in 
Wales? 

And all this scepticism and cynicism is to redound to the 
honour and glory of God ! We are such utter beasts, says 
Mr. Balfour, that God must have created us in His own 
image ! This life is such a farce that there must be a Heaven, 
and let us hope a Hell ! Since nothing is really true, nothing 
can be too preposterous to believe, if it gives us consolation 
to believe it. If the child cries for the Moon, surely it must 



THE THREE GREAT SYNTHESES 55 

have it. If men like to go to Heaven, to Heaven they shall 
go. At any rate, if they still cling to earth, they must be 
taught that earth is little more than a temporary hell, where 
we phantoms squeak and gibber till the other place is hot 
enough. Such are the unspeakable mercies of Omnipotent 
Goodness ! 

Well ! but this line of argument would equally apply to 
many creeds and to most schemes of supernatural salvation. 
If "at the root of every rational process there lies an irrational 
process" (p. 322), if "the certitudes of science lose themselves 
in depths of unfathomable mystery" (p. 288), why not revert 
to Plato's "ideas," to the "music of the spheres," the trans- 
migration of souls, to Transubstantiation, to Mahatmas, 
to anything we find ingenious or hopeful? Musulmans, 
Buddhists, Romanists, and Mormons may all welcome a 
theory of Revelation based on the radical untrustworthiness 
of human Reason and the mysterious collapse of human 
Science. But, since this blight of doubt afflicts the whole 
field of Man's imaginations and convictions, why is the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury to get the benefit of the doubt, and not 
the Pope or Mrs. Besant? All things being alike doubtful, 
and no one of us being even "certain about his own doubts," 
this new "Analogy" leaves it open to every man to believe 
just what catches his fancy; he can give "a provisional 
assent" to anything, however irrational it may seem; he 
can see "the preferential action" of Providence in strength- 
ening the defenders of the British empire ; and, in the com- 
munings of his own secret chamber, each of us can please 
himself in recognising "the halting expression of a reality 
beyond our reach, the half-seen vision of transcendent 
Truth" (p. 219). "Half-seen" indeed it is! 

We may now bring out some of the contrasts, some of the 
analogies, the points of contact, of correspondence, of op- 



56 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

position, in these three great types of general synthesis. 
It will be very instructive, and, to those who know little of 
Positivism, surprising to see how much the Positive or Human 
Synthesis goes hand in hand with the Theological Synthesis 
in moral and spiritual idea, how much it concedes to it in 
intellectual analysis, and how completely it repudiates those 
things which Theology has always most passionately urged 
against Materialism. The Relative Synthesis has none of 
those over-ambitious, unverifiable generalisations, so incom- 
mensurate with Man's limited intelligence, which Theology 
casts in the teeth of the Absolute Synthesis of Science. The 
Relative Synthesis cannot be charged with that inhuman, 
unsympathetic, unspiritual tone which Theology (not un- 
justly) imputes to the Absolute Synthesis. The religion and 
philosophy of Humanity do not exhibit "the pitiless glare" 
of a creed presenting "an universal flux ordered by blind 
causation," and all the other horrid phantoms of atheistic 
materialism, effectively paraded by the eloquence of Mr. 
Balfour. 

One of the central points of combat between Theology 
and Science, ever since the age of Galileo, has been that 
Theology is anthropocentric, whilst Science is daily showing 
us the infinitesimal littleness of Man in the Universe. The- 
ology, says Mr. Spencer, teaches us that "the Power mani- 
fested in thirty millions of suns made a bargain with Abra- 
ham," and, he might add, suffered a horrid death as a male- 
factor to redeem the human mites on one minor planet re- 
volving in the train of one minor sun. What, says Mr. 
Spencer, is human civilisation two thousand years after that 
transcendent sacrifice? And what has God done for the 
million planets revolving round the thirty millions of other 
suns? Science, he says very truly, can accept no anthropo- 
centric or geocentric view as conclusive, seeing that it has been 



THE THREE GREAT SYNTHESES 57 

building up for centuries a mountain of observations about 
forms of life and of matter having no conceivable relation to 
Man or being actively injurious to Man. 

The answer to this, attempted by Theology, and repeated 
by Mr. Balfour with a sort of vague quietism, that the mystery 
of the Incarnation makes all clear : that God has chosen the 
infmitesimally small to confound the infinitely great — is 
hardly above the level of a fashionable curate. The crux 
remains insoluble. In face of the infinity of the Universe 
revealed by science and also of its infinite activity, so sub- 
limely incurious of Man, or so ruthlessly antagonistic to Man, 
the old tales about the loving fatherhood of the Creator and 
the Divine Humanity of his Son become a truly comic hyper- 
bole, which no shuffling about "preferential action" and 
"half -seen visions of transcendent Truth," can commend to 
honest sense. 

On the other hand, the Infinity in space, in time, and in 
proportion which Science reveals, whilst utterly destructive 
of any anthropocentric or geocentric scheme of theology, 
is also alien to the very basis of religion, of duty, and of ac- 
tivity, in so far as it reduces humanity to the level of the worm, 
and converts his earthly abode into a casual atom. In kill- 
ing theology, science has paralysed religion : for the noblest 
attributes of the human spirit, the inspiration to active con- 
duct, and the power to frame synthetic conceptions, are all 
alike endangered. The scientific specialist says, "That is 
no affair of mine, see thou to that" — but religion and phi- 
losophy both feel the dilemma. Mr. Spencer declares that 
the object of religion is the Unknowable — a formula at 
which even agnostics smile. He declares that the basis of 
philosophy is Evolution — alternate "differentiation" and 
"integration," and so forth, through his famous root prin- 
ciples. 



58 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

The ruck of scientific specialists are not concerned with 
any synthesis ; but it can hardly be said that Mr. Spencer's 
synthesis of Evolution throughout the Universe has obtained 
any general or even wide acceptance amongst philosophers. 
Agnostics like Professor Huxley, or Mr. Leslie Stephen, 
entirely disclaim any systematic religion other than that of 
moral conduct and honest thought. And Mr. Herbert 
Spencer himself plaintively admits that the Evolutionary 
Synthesis of the Universe, though the only one which satisfies 
his intellect, is far from being a consoling or an inspiring 
creed. In the close of his reply to Mr. Balfour he says that 
"there is no pleasure in the consciousness of being an infini- 
tesimal bubble on a globe that is itself infinitesimal compared 
with the totality of things." There is no consolation in the 
thought that we are at the mercy of blind forces, he says. 
" Contemplation of a Universe which is without conceivable 
beginning or end, and without intelligible purpose, yields no 
satisfaction." And it is "a regretful inability" that Mr. 
Spencer feels, in that he cannot accept the interpretation of 
Mr. Balfour and his fellow-theologians. These very honest, 
very pathetic, very significant words of Mr. Spencer at the 
close of his philosophic career deserve profound attention. 

Mr. Balfour has only again, for the hundredth time, put 
into eloquent and passionate form the sense of despair and 
horror experienced by the ordinary religious man and woman 
when confronted with this blank, this chaotic, this merciless 
spectre of a Universe — having no Power to protect us mites, 
no loving Being to love and revere, no order to trust in, no 
future to hope for. Now, I say most frankly, that in this, all 
my sympathies are with Mr. Balfour and religious men and 
women. I go much further. And I say that this yearning 
for a Power to revere, a Being to love, for a ttovotco in the 
moral chaos of these blind forces, is a normal and indestruc- 



THE THREE GREAT SYNTHESES 59 

tible instinct of humanity, which no philosophy and no science 
can ever drive out. Theology meets a spontaneous craving 
of the human soul which Evolution does not meet, which 
Mr. Spencer mournfully confesses that it cannot meet. And, 
therefore, I say it without hesitation or qualification, the 
absolute synthesis of the Universe as proclaimed by science 
— any absolute synthesis of the Universe whatever — fails 
to satisfy me, and even fills me with a sense of moral and 
spiritual repulsion. 

Am I then "on the side of the angels," as Mr. Balfour's 
party chief used to say ? Certainly not ! For, the relative 
synthesis of Humanity offers an exit out of this almost hope- 
less dilemma, and presents us with a final eirenicon between 
religion and science. We fully adopt the demand of the 
religious spirit for a human or anthropomorphic, sympathetic 
Providence, for a world of order, in which the individual 
may feel protection, permanence, a being to serve, and a 
future after death. We utterly repudiate the childish hy- 
potheses which satisfied Arab sheikhs and hysterical monks. 
On the other hand, we fully adopt the conclusions of science 
which Mr. Spencer has so often tabulated, as to our being 
but infinitesimal bubbles on an infinitesimal speck of dust, 
whirling about in an inconceivable Universe, itself having 
no intelligible purpose and presenting unfathomable mys- 
teries. But we utterly repudiate the dismal suggestion that the 
business of man is to contemplate this unfathomable Universe, 
without pretence of sympathy or hope of ever reaching to 
its realities. The relative synthesis accepts the indestructible 
spirit of religion and also the irrefragable teaching of science. 
It rejects the guesses of theology : it rejects the inhuman 
nothingness presented by a blank infinity of Evolution. 

What is the solution? It is this. A relative synthesis 
admits that absolutely, in rerum naturd, the Earth is an in- 



60 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

finitesimal bubble, and Man a very feeble, casual, and 
faulty organism. Nothing that science can prove about the 
Universe and its infinities, or about Man and his limitations, 
need shock or disturb us. Our reason convinces us that it 
is as near the real truth as our minds can as yet penetrate 
— and that is enough. But relatively, i.e. in relation to our 
intellectual powers, to our knowledge, to our human wants, 
to our powers of emotion and of action, relatively — this 
Earth is to us mites the true centre of the World, and Hu- 
manity is far the noblest, strongest, most humane, most 
permanent organism that we can prove to inhabit it. The 
Universe is all very grand, but it is a mere background ; even 
the Solar System, which is all that we can know well, and all 
that we need to know at all, is only the environment of our 
human lives ; it gives us the soil on which we stand, the at- 
mosphere we breathe. 

We continue to increase our knowledge of Nature, but 
we feel that the needs of Man are the main ends of knowledge. 
Philosophy, morality, religion, again resume a geocentric, 
an anthropocentric basis. Our synthesis is frankly geo- 
centric, our religion is frankly anthropomorphic. A science 
which is not normally and mainly devoted to problems of this 
Earth or to problems of human nature, is always in danger of 
losing itself in idle conundrums. A synthesis which pretends 
to explain and correlate the Universe, when it as yet transcends 
Man's powers to explain and correlate the solar system, 
is in danger of degenerating into a pretentious imposture. 
And a religion which is not truly and earnestly anthropo- 
morphic, or rather entirely human, is in danger of becoming 
mere dry bones and logical formula — indeed of being no 
religion at all, but a pretext for having no religion. All these 
dangers to science, to philosophy, to religion are avoided by 
the relative or human and earthly synthesis — which admits, 



THE THREE GREAT SYNTHESES 6 1 

as freely as Mr. Balfour or Mr. Spencer, that absolutely, in 
rerum naturd, the Earth is a bubble, and Man is a mote; 
but which insists that for purposes of human progress and 
happiness we must think and act as if the world revolved 
round our globe, and Man was its master and its ruler. 

The consequences of this great revolution in thought, the 
substitution of the relative for the absolute philosophy, might 
be indefinitely extended. All the moral and spiritual ob- 
jections to the contemplation of an Infinity to which we can 
ascribe no human feeling, and in which we can see no intel- 
ligible plan, disappear to men who habitually respect a visible 
and human Providence, to whom Infinity is a colourless 
background. " Blind causation" cannot appal men whose 
interests are centred in the moral causation of human progress. 
Human reason has no preponderant part in a world which 
is to us pervaded with a sense of human love and human 
energy. The mysteries around us and within us do not 
paralyse men whose dominant desire is to achieve some prac- 
tical result in the world of reality and to hand it on better 
to their successors. There is no difficulty felt by men in 
turning aside from conundrums, however ancient or fas- 
cinating, when they are trained to feel how precious is every 
hour of active life. 

The survival of the fittest, the struggle for existence, the 
tendency to degenerate, and all the other tendencies which 
biologists note as incident to organisms in our unstable 
planetary conditions are true enough as tendencies, and we 
are perfectly prepared to accept the final demonstrations 
of real science thereon. We are not ready to jump for joy 
at every new hypothesis which seems to threaten humanity 
with an early dissolution. And in any case we are confident 
that humanity, which has overcome far more ominous an- 
tagonists, has ample resources within itself to counteract 



62 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

any tendencies which threaten its progress. And thus it 
comes about that a relative synthesis — which means a phi- 
losophy and a religion that has its central field in this Earth 
and its dominant inspiration in Humanity — has open to it 
all the solid truths which modern science can establish, free 
from the sophisms and evasions of Theology, and at the same 
time has open to it all the elevating thoughts, hopes, conso- 
lations, and yearnings which are conferred by a loving and 
submissive reverence for a sympathetic and mighty Provi- 
dence. 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 

Philosophy should mean such a co-ordinated system of 
thought as may cause the whole mental apparatus to con- 
verge. Religion should mean that concentration of belief 
and feeling on one dominant Power, whereby our whole 
human nature is purified and disciplined, and so is constantly 
inspired to the strenuous accomplishment of man's true work. 

The older and current forms of Philosophy and of Religion 
fail precisely at this point : they do not systematise all our 
ideas ; they do not pretend to organise the entire life of man. 

The degenerate pupils of Kant and of Hegel who now lay 
claim to the title of philosophers offer us nothing that even 
assumes to be a philosophy of science, or of conduct, or of 
history, or of society. Their so-called philosophy is limited 
to ontological and psychological aenigmas. The evolutionist 
schools no doubt tread lightly over these metaphysical bogs ; 
but on their side they entirely drop history, and we pass in 
their pages from prehistoric and half-savage man to the 
sceptics of the eighteenth century. A philosophy with such 
enormous voids is not really synthetic. 

Those schools of thought which adopt a theological basis, 
or admit supernatural ideas, whether Catholic, Neo-Chris- 
tian, or frankly Deist, have a great deal to say about history, 
or rather about arbitrary portions of history, explaining them 
freely by the light of their supernatural hypotheses ; and they 
certainly do understand the great primary truth, that Religion 

63 



64 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

is, and always has been, the dominant principle of Man's 
social life. But then, alas ! these theological philosophers 
have nothing to tell us about the development of modern 
science, about the statics or the dynamics of that industrial 
society which forms the complex problem of modern life. 
None have anything serious to say about secular education, 
scientific politics, political economy, science, health, poetry, 
art. All these things, that is, four-fifths of life, lie outside 
the range of Theology, just as they lie outside the range of 
Metaphysics. 

Many of these subjects are no doubt strongly grappled 
with by the materialist schools of thought, which deal in a 
scientific, and often in a philosophic, spirit, with science, 
politics, economy, and the like. But, inasmuch as their 
history, such as it is, jumps from the Bone Age to the age 
of Diderot and Hume, they deliberately ignore just those 
parts of life which Theology, with all its shortcomings, 
directly takes as its sphere. The instincts of the human soul 
towards some great Power external to itself, the desire to be 
brought into communion with the World around us, to rest 
in some definite conception of the way in which We and the 
World around us are related to each other, the yearning to 
know more of that fellowship we feel within us towards the 
mighty whole of which we are sons and members; finally, 
the desire to put forth these instincts of sympathy in some 
common act of adoration — these are things, we say, of vast 
power, utterly ineradicable from the heart of man, essential 
to the life of man ; nor can they be disposed of by an unin- 
telligible chapter or by a logical formula or two. They must 
lie deep as the great fundamental stratum of all philosophy ; 
they must coincide with its entire field. The system in 
which these things have no place, nay, in which they do not 
take the first place, may contain many useful things; but 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 65 

it is not a system of human life. That is to say, it is not Phi- 
losophy ; much less is it Religion. 

The conventional answer to this is as follows : Philosophy 
and religion have each special spheres of their own; phi- 
losophy has nothing to do with science, or history, or politics, 
or devotion; religion has nothing to do with thought, or 
logic, with worldly wisdom, or physical health, or earthly 
wealth. The business of philosophy, they say, is with ab- 
stract existence ; that of religion, with the Soul and its future. 

In this answer is revealed the reason why Philosophy and 
Religion have to-day so little permanent hold over men, why 
their accepted authority is so small, and the anarchy within 
them so deep. Philosophies, which profess to give men an 
ultimate scheme of ideas, leave out of their scheme vast re- 
gions of ideas, some of them the most intense and profound 
that stir men to act. Religions, which profess to concentrate 
men's spirit on the sole end of life, leave out and profess 
to despise almost all that, even to the noblest natures, makes 
life worth living : this, they tell us, belongs to some other 
sphere, that of science, politics, art, anything but religion. 
The natural result follows. Human nature soon wearies of 
metaphysical sublimities and of theological ecstasies, and it 
deals with life as it best can, framing explanations of it and 
ideals for it in its own practical way. And this way cannot 
be reconciled with the philosophies and the religions which 
strive to eliminate nature. It combats them, baffles them, 
and finally silences them all. 

Philosophy and Religion must remain thus impotent, a 
byword and a jest to clear-sighted and energetic natures, 
whilst they thus are content to nibble at separate sides of 
human nature. One sees at once why they hold themselves 
restricted to special corners of Man's being. Philosophy, 
in so far as it is metaphysical, cannot consent to surrender 



66 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

itself uniformly to the logic of positive observation, and so 
cannot touch the real problems of life and of knowledge. 
Philosophy, so far as it is materialist, cannot bring itself to 
recognise the spiritual nature of man, and so cannot touch 
the problems of Veneration, Adoration, and the highest 
sympathies. Religion again, fondly clinging to the super- 
natural as if that were its sole raison d'etre, dreads to be 
dragged into the real and active world where everything 
supernatural is grotesque; and so religion stands to-day, 
like a pathetic Gothic ruin, soothing and touching the finer 
natures amongst us still, but quite outside of and apart from 
the busy life of men. 

Philosophy, equally with Religion, is nothing if not syn- 
thetic — that is, co-ordinating and harmonising — and also 
comprehensive, that is, correlating all sides of thought and 
life. Leave any sides of thought or life wholly out of sight 
in your philosophy or your religion, and these introduce con- 
flict, and ultimately confusion. The reason is obvious from 
the very definition of philosophy or of religion. The one 
professes to set on an immutable basis the highest generali- 
sations of thought, the paramount ideas of the human mind. 
The other professes to hold out to us as ever present and 
eternal verities the highest aims of human life, and the para- 
mount object of our noblest affection. Is it not plain that 
utter failure must ensue if the paramount ideas of Philosophy, 
or the paramount ideal of Religion, cannot be got into line 
with the practical needs of life, or the general sympathies 
and instincts of our nature? 

Philosophy and Religion are not the same ; because Phi- 
losophy is a synthesis of knowledge and of ideas, and Reli- 
gion is a synthesis of nature and of life. But both are the 
same in this, that they must give a complete harmony, or 
they give none at all. The one must effect a complete 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 6? 

synthesis of the whole intellectual sphere ; the other, a com- 
plete synthesis of the whole vital energy. Philosophy and 
Religion, affecting to deal with the highest, and yet knowing 
nothing of many of the commonest and widest truths that 
concern Man, are mere impostures. Philosophy and Reli- 
gion must be able to account for the whole of thought, the 
whole of life, or they do nothing. Now, no one of the cur- 
rent systems of Philosophy or Religion either does account 
for the whole of thought, the whole of life, or even pretends 
to do so. When Auguste Comte recalled men to the true 
question — What must Philosophy explain, what must Reli- 
gion effect ? — he started, even if he had done nothing else, 
a conclusive revolution in the method of human thought, 
in the ideal of Man's life. 

We are persuaded that all these things can be, and must 
be, reconciled, brought into harmony. We say there is a 
scheme of thought whereby the religious emotions, the scien- 
tific beliefs, the practical energies, may all have their natural 
play and freedom, yet may all work one with another, not 
working, as they do now, one against the other. This scheme 
of thought, to sum it up in a phrase, consists in referring every- 
thing human to the continuity of human progress, on a uni- 
form basis of demonstrable law. This is a Human Synthesis, 
meaning by this term a system at once of thought and of life, co- 
extensive with human nature, omitting nothing that is human 
or ministers to humanity, never wandering into the super- 
human, or any Absolute Universe ; but, on the contrary, consist- 
ently grouping everything we know or do round the permanent 
good of Man, conceived in the highest and widest sense. 

This Human Synthesis thus differs from every kind of 
inquiry that is purely philosophical or scientific from any 
that is purely literary. It looks upon research not as an end, 
but as an instrument to effect some real result, now, presently, 



68 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

or hereafter. Abstract thought we need, special research we 
need, but no research, no kind of thought, is ever to be a 
mere law, a sole end, to itself : arbitrary, absolute, unhuman, 
irreligious. 

This Human Synthesis differs, too, from every reforming 
scheme in that it invariably treats the present as a mere 
continuation of the past, and the future as simply the neces- 
sary and destined product of the past and the present. Social 
philosophers and idealists are wont to talk as if the present 
were a muddle hardly worthy of attention, as if the future 
could be recast in new and superior moulds, flinging the 
rotten past away as dross and rubbish. Even the phi- 
losophers of Evolution consistently forget that the genera- 
tion of men to be are being daily evolved out of the whole 
of the generations that have been. Evolutionists are the 
readiest of all to tear up whole regions of human history as 
waste paper, or to discharge the product of vast ages of Man 
into the deep, as some dangerous excrement of the race. 

There is no test so sure for any claim to treat of things 
human as this — Does it give a complete theory of the whole 
history of Man's past ? When we say history, we imply of 
course more than annals : some things not always included 
even in the learning of the Gibbons, the Macaulays, and the 
Freemans. History means the whole series of the laws and 
phenomena traceable in the development of the human race, 
including the prehistoric, the uncivilised, and the oceanic 
world, and including the history of science, of philosophy, 
of religion, of industry, of manners, of economy, of mechanics, 
of art : in short, the history of society much more than the 
history of war or politics. They who can give us a scientific 
and consistent theory of history in this sense are alone com- 
petent to give us an adequate scheme of philosophy or, I say 
it advisedly, a complete ideal of religion. 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 69 

In the early days of Christianity, miraculous power was 
regarded as the test of a divine mission. We might almost 
say in these days that the test of a philosophical mission in 
sociology, that is, power to cast accurately the laws that 
determine the Present and the Future, is the fact of having 
given an adequate explanation of the Past. 

After five-and-twenty years of continuous study of the 
historical theory of Auguste Comte, we have come for our 
part to believe that there is none other with which it can be 
even compared. I am far from supposing that a theory 
constructed forty years ago by one who was a man of science 
and a philosopher, not a specialist in history, is absolutely 
final or infallible. Such an idea would be laughable to a 
positivist, who can smile equally at the petty criticisms of 
some historical pedant or some political partisan. It is 
beyond all question more lucid, more complete, more real, 
more scientific than the general theory of Hegel ; and after 
Hegel's what have we? We turn to the most popular of 
the philosophic writers of our time. Do we find in Mr. 
Herbert Spencer, in Mr. Lewes, in Mr. Mill, in Mr. Huxley, 
or Mr. Darwin, nay, in Mr. Carlyle or Mr. Freeman, his- 
torians by profession, anything that can be called a general 
conception of the entire course of human evolution, moral, 
practical, intellectual, and physical? 

Every attempt to found a sound conception of Philosophy 
or of Religion without a real and complete Sociology * is futile. 
And every attempt to form a Sociology on anything short 
of a complete concrete theory of Man's progress in civilisation 
is an attempt to found Sociology out of one's head, to spin 
a system out of one's inner consciousness. We hear much 

1 Purists in language will have at length to submit to this indispensable 
hybrid, which means the science of the elements and of the course of human 
society. 



JO PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

nowadays of the necessity for basing our Sociology on prin- 
ciples of Evolution. Precisely so. But what does Evolu- 
tion, applied to the progressive civilisation of man, imply 
if it be not a systematic history of human work from the time 
of the Cave-men and the Lake-men to that of the great 
Hordes; and thence onward to the Theocracies, the Poly- 
theists, the Greeks and the Romans, and so on to the history 
of Catholicism, of Feudalism, the dissolution of both, the 
Revolution, and modern industrial society ? What we need is 
a complete scheme of Evolution throughout this entire series. 

Another great difference there is which marks off the 
Positive Synthesis from all the actual philosophical schemes. 
It is, or rather it contains, a general Philosophy; but the 
Philosophy is merely one side of the system. It is an active, 
doing, changing system. It is not only a philosophy with 
a theory of what is being done, but it is a polity with a pro- 
gramme of what ought to be done, a society, a working body, 
one may say a Church, with a set of institutions to put its 
programme into action. 

Positivism, by virtue of this Human Synthesis, never works 
out a theory, or enters upon a research for mere love of re- 
search, but in full sense of the vast importance of research 
wisely directed to contribute to human wants. Not that all 
speculation is necessarily with a direct and immediate design 
of present action and use. But it is never purposely idle, 
consciously aimless, due to mere intellectual curiosity as of 
boys intent on "odd and even." 

To us this perpetual and aimless busying about problems, 
philosophical, scientific, literary, in mere vacuity or for mere 
vanity, with no social or intelligible motive but these, is one 
of the most melancholy spectacles of our time. Thousands 
of learned and ingenious minds are occupied in incessant 
re-shifting and re-sorting the infinite materials before us, 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 7 1 

teaching us nothing, preparing nothing, cumbering the field 
of knowledge and of thought, wasting good brain in multi- 
plying chaos. For multitudes of these studious men never 
make up their minds on a single great problem of thought 
or of life ; hardly know what it is that men need to know and 
need to help them in life ; shrinking even from this first 
duty of a healthy understanding, so long only as they can 
soothe the itch of their cerebral curiosity. 

Without saying that the counting of the pebbles on the 
sea-shore is an altogether idle and useless employment, we 
may truly say that interminable and purposeless wandering 
in the realm of knowledge is a demoralising and humiliating 
spectacle. Such are like the spirits seen by the Poet in 
Limbo, "who with desire languish without hope." Things 
of priceless value need to be known ; and they are neglected. 
The enormous multiplication of minute and detached ob- 
servations crowd out the really essential problems and truths. 
Worst of all, the habit of employing the intellect in purpose- 
less researches, like schoolboys writing show verses or com- 
peting for a prize, unmans the character, weakens the in- 
tellectual fibre, and lowers the standard of the age. 

The work before the intelligence of Man is practically 
infinite ; the materials and possible fields of work are infinite ; 
the relative strength of our intellect to cope with this work 
is small indeed. As Bacon said, the subtlety of Nature is 
ever beyond the subtlety of Man. Ten thousand years of the 
brightest genius, with millions and millions of fellow-work- 
men, will not suffice to accomplish all that Man needs of dis- 
covery, knowledge, method, experiment, meditation, re- 
corded observation, to make life all that it might be and ought 
to be. To accomplish it needs the complex organisation of 
an army, the discipline, co-operation, patience, division of 
labour, of a great government. And withal we have capable 



72 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

brains idly exhausting their powers in the meanest of curi- 
osities, in the most contemptible pursuit of personal prizes. 
Never will philosophy be worthy of its mission till observers 
and thinkers can set themselves to labour again in that 
religious spirit in which the mediaeval poets or the truly 
Catholic painters would begin their work with prayer. And 
if it be little now that the modern biologist or chemist could 
do with prayer, he might find the real essence of prayer in a 
heartfelt sense of social duty, of the human future to which 
his work is dedicated, of the majestic past from which every 
faculty he has is drawn. 

It is here that the Human Synthesis stands in such con- 
trast with the practice of so many schools, scientific, meta- 
physical, literary. It calls for a real co-ordination of all 
knowledge; that is to say, in order to bring knowledge to 
bear on life, it must be made connected and systematic. 

Our separate lines of knowledge will go on to indefinite 
divergence, and will fail to support each other, until we can 
weave them into one — form a single fabric of them. We 
must be able to answer such questions as these : — 

i. What is the bearing of Astronomy on our general 
theory of Duty? 

2. What is the action and reaction of the science of Chem- 
istry (for instance) on Sociology? 

3. What is the practical relation of Biology to Morals? 
Whilst we have no answer to these questions we have no 

real Philosophy, no synthesis, no stable basis of harmony 
between our thoughts and our life. Well ! in other words, 
we have no Religion. For religion (we say) is just that en- 
tire harmony between the human nature and the life our 
human nature leads. 

It is the fashion now to dispense with all attempts at con- 
vergence, to decry it as a narrowing thing. Synthesis, re- 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 73 

ligion, are words shrunk into a remnant of their old meaning, 
things that the world leaves to metaphysicians and devotees. 
But this assumption that all synthesis, any religion, is bad 
is simply part of the revolt against an incomplete synthesis, 
imperfect religion. It is against all the great examples of 
high civilisation in history. It does not rest on a shadow of 
evidence, or even of argument. The sceptical and revolu- 
tionary schools assume it as an a priori truth. But is the 
actual intellectual state and the present social condition the 
result of that state, so admirable and perfect as to justify 
its own transcendent origin, to prove itself without evidence ? 
Do our deepest brains and hearts rest satisfied in the intel- 
lectual state of to-day? Far from it. Conservatives and 
reformers in thought alike agree that there is much out of 
joint ; they chafe at the discord of ideas which is ever hinder- 
ing truth. 

The older philosophy, that which grew up with and out of 
Theology, has its definite connection between Astronomy and 
Duty. God, said the pious thinker, made the Sun and the 
planets to revolve round this earth as we see them, the Sun 
to give men light by day, the Moon by night ; and He too 
revealed to men their duty and commanded them to fulfil it. 
And so on throughout all human knowledge. This is, no 
doubt, a very rude theory, and utterly unsatisfactory, but 
it is a synthesis of human thought. It is the theological 
synthesis. Mighty results have been achieved thereby. 

Materialism, too, has given some sort of answer to the 
question (let us say) — What is the relation between Biology 
and Morals? Materialism asserts that the state of the moral 
nature is dependent on the state of the nervous system, for 
this determines the moral condition : in fact, that moral phe- 
nomena may be reduced to, and studied as, phenomena of 
nerve-tissue and the like; not morally, but biologically. 



74 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

This theory will land us in all the evils of fatalism ; it will 
deprave our hearts and muddle our heads in the end. But 
it is a theory ; it is the materialist synthesis ; and, consistently 
worked out, it will effect great things, even if they be evil 
things. 

Every great effort or phase of human civilisation has been 
due to the fact that there was a correspondence between the 
moving ideas current at the time and the life that men lived 
in it. There was always a congruity in men's thoughts; 
they could be correlated as a series or a system. Those who 
are content to base their entire existence on Revelation, 
Church, Authority of any kind, naturally regard any co- 
ordination of knowledge as superfluous. The Religion, 
Church, or Creed gives some general unity to men's thoughts 
and knowledge, and supplies the ground of the life lived. 
Those, on the other hand, who seek a real, a scientific, natural 
basis for their life, who think that, come what may, know- 
ledge and truth must underlie all action and all morality, 
all such (one would suppose) must insist on the need of having 
all real knowledge both reduced to order and organically 
applied to life. 

There are many, professing to base themselves on science, 
who repudiate any idea of reducing science to system, who 
shrink from it with horror, and would leave science, and 
indeed life, to free research, that is, to chance. What is 
this but the Nihilism of philosophy ? The Nihilists of Russia, 
it is said, desire to make a tabula rasa, to get rid at once of 
governments, institutions, religions, and then to start de novo. 
Our philosophical and scientific Nihilists protest against all 
system, especially any system that is to deal with the relative 
bearing of special researches. They would leave everything 
to the infallible inner afflatus of each inquirer's intellectual 
inspiration. Nihilism in philosophy is just as chimerical as 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 75 

Nihilism in society. All the reasons which apply to coherent 
institutions in society apply to the necessity for congruous 
and systematic ideas in thought. 

There are undoubtedly some materialists who seriously 
seek for an intellectual synthesis, or general co-ordination 
of knowledge. But these, without exception, seem to look 
for an Absolute Synthesis. By this we understand an ar- 
rangement of knowledge in what purports to be the true 
relations of things to each other as they actually are, some 
attempt to form a picture of the Universe in its real shape. 
The synthetic philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer would 
seem to aim at a co-ordination of laws cosmological, bio- 
logical, and moral round a common principle of Evolution; 
and he has worked out this evolution in many branches of 
science, the most notable things we miss being the facts of 
general history, of religion, of churches, of governments, 
of poetry, of art. A synthetic philosophy should give us 
some key to a general conception of history. But the history 
of Evolution has hardly yet explained to us some famous 
events and persons, amongst whom we might count Moses, 
St. Paul, Mahomet, Caesar, Charlemagne, Richelieu, Dante, 
St. Francis, a Kempis, Angelico, Scott ; the Catholic Church, 
the Crusades, the Revolution. 

A Human Synthesis is in direct contrast with any objective 
unity whatever. Giving up the attempt not only to know 
things as they really are in themselves, but to arrange our 
knowledge of things round any external centre, from any 
absolute standpoint, the Human Synthesis aims only at 
systematising the knowledge of that which affects Man, and 
of grouping it round the fact of its relation to Man. Theo- 
logical thought referred all knowledge to the Creator and His 
will, His revealed purposes, and Man's future destiny at His 
judgment-seat. Metaphysical thought, when it attempted 



76 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

any synthesis at all, found a centre in some general hypothesis 
of Nature, or the eternal fitness of things. A purely ma- 
terialistic synthesis, or a synthesis based on Evolution, in like 
manner attempts some Absolute arrangement, conceived 
as coinciding, in a way more or less complete, with the actual 
tableau of natural law as we suppose it really energising in 
space. 

It is a necessary result of the relativity of all our know- 
ledge that we can have no Absolute Synthesis, just as we can 
attain to no objective truth. Even if our knowledge of a 
thing, passed as it is through the medium of our own un- 
trustworthy senses, does come very closely in each special 
observation to that reality which we assume to be 
behind each group of sensations, still when we attempt to 
arrange a series of such groups in any order, the human 
perspective, in which alone we can see them, must show them 
to us at an immeasurable distance from the real relation of 
these groups in the Universe, if any such relation indeed they 
have. The relativity of our knowledge is continuous, the 
mass of knowable things is truly infinite, the limitation of 
Man's powers in comparison is complete. And so, the at- 
tempt of Man to co-ordinate his knowledge in terms of ab- 
solute knowledge would be as idle as the attempt to reach 
absolute knowledge. If Man cannot really know the ob- 
jective World, much less can he take the objective World 
as the field and measure of his knowledge. Omniscience 
alone can do this. 

Positivism, holding on to the necessity for a Synthesis, 
and abandoning the attempt at an absolute Synthesis, falls 
back, as the corollary to the relativity of knowledge, on the 
relative Synthesis, an arrangement of all our ideas, upwards 
and downwards, from the central point of Man in the widest 
and grandest conception of this term, that is, in the entire 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS JJ 

life of the human race in the highest of its ideals and its 
aspirations. 

Let us see exactly what is meant by a relative Synthesis 
for Thought and Life. It is the real surrender of the attempt 
to get at things as they are in rerum naturd; the effort to get 
even at absolute relations is surrendered as completely as 
we surrender the effort to get at absolute existences. We 
concentrate all our efforts on the work of getting a knowledge 
of things in so far as they affect Man. No doubt this does 
not imply any vulgar utilitarianism or simply material in- 
terests in men. It means that our intellectual efforts are 
animated and marshalled by the principle of their ultimate 
bearing on human life. 

This is what we mean by a religious philosophy, a religious 
tone of thought, a religious ideal of labour. Religion does 
not begin and end in just worshipping some ideal being or 
power, in simply holding to this or that doctrine about the 
origin of the universe, in hoping or fearing some imaginable 
good or evil in some imaginable after-world — this is not 
religion : right or wrong, it is the machinery of religion, the 
elements or instruments of religion. Religion has been 
strained down into these things by priests and zealots strug- 
gling to save something in the crash of orthodoxy, just as 
Jesuits would narrow Christianity down to the hierarchy 
or the Papal See. But religion in its proper, full sense means 
the state of unity and concentration of Nature which results 
when our intellectual, moral, and active life are all made one 
by the continual presence of some great Principle, in which 
we believe, which we love and adore, and to which our acts 
are submitted, so that the perpetual sense of our dependence 
on that power goes deep down into all we think, or feel, or 
do. Men may believe in God, or Heaven, and Hell, and yel 
their souls may be torn with contending passions, and may 



78 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

have the restlessness and incoherence of wild beasts; souls 
like those of Philip of Spain, or Mary Stuart. To have 
religion, in any true sense, is to have peace. 

This peace, no merely ecstatic and imaginary state of 
emotion, but a real concentration of all Man's varied faculties 
in one work, has never been completely effected by any scheme 
whatever. It has been partially effected by certain schemes, 
religions, systems, or philosophies in special stages of civi- 
lisation. 

Even Fetichism (the belief that activity in Nature around 
us is due to the emotions and wills of the things that are seen 
in activity) gives some sort of harmony so far as it goes ; so 
that, in a sense, thought, feeling, and action are stimulated 
and disciplined thereby. 

Theology, in its long history, has raised human nature to 
periods of wonderful energy. Polytheism produced prodigies 
of active intensity. Monotheism has had sublime power over 
the heart. But what can Monotheism do now to vitalise 
and discipline the intellect, absorbed as it is in its desperate 
struggle with science, fact, history, common sense? Not 
that one would presume to say that Monotheism is incom- 
patible with intellectual force in given minds, but that on its 
own confession it is quite unable to systematise the logic of 
modern thought, to disentangle the accumulated masses of 
modern knowledge. 

A metaphysical creed, such as Pantheism or that gossamer 
Theism which is real Pantheism, may have some power over 
the emotional nature in some characters; much possibly 
over the intellect in the poetic spirits. But how will Panthe- 
ism, or any of those nebular hypotheses about God which 
now amuse subtle men of letters, how are these to concentrate 
the activity? Pantheism is a meditative, solitary, subjec- 
tive creed. How can the imaginative sentiment that every- 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 79 

thing is God, and God is everything (certainly nothing that 
we immediately see or feel), nerve a man with patience, un- 
bending will, enthusiastic concentration of purpose to work, 
that is, to change things, to overcome this, to develop that, 
to assert the supremacy of the human character in the midst 
of a faulty but improvable world ? Pantheism, Neo-Theism, 
Nephelo-Theism, is the religion of scholars, not of men and 
women with work to do. 

Turn to Materialism, 1 in any of its prevalent forms. Take 
a theory of an all-sufficing, all-explaining, all-pervading Evo- 
lution ; it is a creed which may unquestionably stimulate the 
intellect, give it a central point ; it may do the same for the 
activity. And, now that the development of the intellectual 
and active powers is treated as the sole end of education, 
that seems enough to many : so that they find a sort of syn- 
thesis in Evolution ; it becomes to them a central idea, round 
which they can imagine a future generation basing its life 
and thought. 

But what can Evolution do to give a basis for the entire 
man, how can it act on the moral nature and appeal to feeling, 
to veneration, devotion, love ? The heart of Man cannot love 
protoplasm, or feel enthusiastic devotion to the idea of sur- 
vival of the fittest. Our moral being is not purified and trans- 
figured by contemplating the dynamic potency that lies hid 
in Matter. Was any one ever made purer, braver, tenderer 
by the law of Perpetual Differentiation? The scorn which 
true brains and hearts having the root of the matter in religion 
launch against this assumption has been far from unjust or 
excessive. The dream that on the ruins of the Bible, Creed, 
and Commandments, in the space once filled by Aquinas and 

1 It may be convenient to state that Materialism is throughout used for 
any general philosophy of the world and of Man wherein the dominant 
force is not found in some conception of moral will and the highest sympathy. 



SO PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Bernard and Bossuet, or by Paradise Lost, the Pilgrim'' s 
Progress, and the English Prayer Book, there might be erected 
a faith in the Indefinite Persistence of Force and the Potential 
Mutability of Matter, indeed deserves the ridicule it meets. 
Evolution will never eliminate the heart out of Man so long 
as Mankind exists ; nor will the spirit of worship, devotion, 
and self-sacrifice cease to be the deepest and most abiding 
force of human society. 

See the dilemma in which the Theological and the Ma- 
terialist Syntheses fatally revolve. The theological explana- 
tion, starting from profound feeling and rude knowledge, 
would force under the conception of an anthropomorphic 
Providence the hard facts of the external world. Now the 
hard facts of this external world — law, sequence, struggle, 
imperfection, decay — are so familiar to all minds that they 
have split the conception of Almighty Benevolence till it 
bursts and cracks around us. To the theologians succeed 
the materialists, radiant with the triumph of law, evolution, 
differentiation, and the like; they extend these conceptions 
to Man, to society, to the soul, and they in turn seek to group 
all ideas, whether cosmical or moral, round one supreme 
conception. Some call it Law, some Force, some Evolution, 
some Matter: all agree in this, that they think they have 
found one conception, theory, group of ideas, or system of 
thought, which can be carried through the whole range of 
phenomena and will explain all facts, cosmical or human, 
physical or moral, spiritual or social. 

They have rushed on the other horn of the dilemma, with 
consequences even worse than those of theologians. The 
theologians revolt our understanding when they seek to force 
into the great moral conception of Providence the immutable 
world of law, and the waste disclosed by Nature. The 
Materialists revolt our hearts when they seek to crush the 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 8 1 

great moral and social forces of Man, under conceptions that 
are physical not moral, by reference to sources that are in- 
tellectual not emotional. Against this the noble instincts 
of the best hearts and brains rebel, and most honourably rebel. 
Man and our human society, they cry, will be degraded into 
mere animality, if the sole supreme Power presented to our 
daily thought is a force such as we can trace in a chemical 
experiment, applicable to gases and cells just as much as to 
civilisation and to our human hearts. Well ! reply the ma- 
terialists, if the sole supreme Power presented to our daily 
thought be an omnipotent, ubiquitous Providence of Free 
Will and infinite Goodness, your science becomes a fairy- 
tale, your explanation of the world a tissue of mystical soph- 
isms, and your life artificial, hysterical, useless. 

Both objections are unanswerable, for both are true. But 
then both claims are equally inadmissible, equally false. 
The claim of Theology to make its Providence absolute and 
ubiquitous, paramount in the physical and moral Universe, is 
just as hollow as its claim to maintain the idea of fatherly 
protection and filial reverence is strong. The claim of Ma- 
terialism to see nothing in human nature but the Reign of 
Law is as shocking as its claim to maintain the omnipresence 
of law is unassailable. Theology tries to make our ideas of 
Nature and Man reducible in the limit to the idea of God. 
Materialism tries to make our knowledge of the moral and 
spiritual world ultimately resolvable into our knowledge of the 
physical and material world. The one theory ends in becom- 
ing fantastic and even insincere, the other ends in being un- 
human and even bestial. As we get out of the mysticism 
of Theology, we fall into the slime of Materialism. 

No such Monism as either theory presents is possible in 
philosophy. Monism is a remnant of the old ambition of 
human thought in its infancy. Providence is an idea that 



82 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

cannot be extended throughout the realm of the External 
World as well as of Man, any more than the idea of Force 
and Evolution can be admitted to rule in the moral as well 
as in the physical world. We shall have eventually to recog- 
nise a Dualism, and thus we can save our belief both in Law 
and in Providence. The world of Law is everywhere visible 
in the environment of Man, and, so far as we can see, is the 
ultimate principle therein, manifested to the eye of Man. 
The world of Law is traceable also in the world of Man, so 
far as Man shares the nature of his environment, and is made 
up of it, and works with it. But face to face with the envi- 
ronment there stands Man, presenting us not only with the 
phenomena of Law, but also with the phenomena of Will, 
Thought, and Love. Nor are these phenomena of Will, 
Thought, Love, of sympathy, and providence, and trust, and 
hope, at all ultimately reducible to phenomena of sequence and 
evolution, however intimately associated they be with them. 
Thus, then, a Human Synthesis avoids both horns of the 
dilemma whereon Theology and Materialism strike in turn. 
It does not seek to extend the reign of Feeling into the Uni- 
verse. It does not suffer Feeling to be absorbed into the 
External World and its laws. Man, dependent on his en- 
vironment and yet distinct from it, even in a way controlling 
it, remains a truly human Power, with a sublime ideal, and 
profound sympathies. Great as he is, he recognises the 
eternal limits of his power. Aspiring as he is, he does not 
forget the facts and the immutable conditions of his destiny. 
The World and Man stand in continuous correlation. And 
Man, renouncing all ideas of omniscience, as of omnipotence 
or omnipresence, accepts the bounds of his might; but he 
is humbly conscious that on certain fields his human heart 
is supreme, and that in these fields are to be found the solid 
parts of human happiness. 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 83 

In the end, Theology, Metaphysics, Materialism, fail to 
establish any permanent unity in the whole of human life; 
the first failing to satisfy the full-grown intellect, the second 
being without any means of influencing the active nature, 
the third being a blank in the moral sphere. 

A Human Synthesis, or central motive, reaches all of these 
equally, and brings them into harmony one with another. 
It incorporates and revives all that is solid or permanent in 
Theology, in Panthesim, in Materialism. If it does not con- 
centrate the whole life of Man on the idea of a Divine Being, 
assumed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and all good, it does 
concentrate Man's life in the visible presence of a being, of 
surpassing greatness, beneficence, and wisdom, when com- 
pared with any single individual life. If it declines to treat 
seriously the mystical poetry that sees God in everything, 
and everything in God, still it does observe in the whole en- 
vironment of Man the forces and the potencies on which the 
great Human Being rests for its existence, and whereout it 
frames its own continual growth : forces and potencies which 
that Human Being can ^frequently control and can per- 
petually adapt. 

In one sense, the Human Synthesis would have an anal- 
ogy with Pantheism, if we looked only to Man, that is, to 
one side of the equation, and put aside that continual en- 
vironment of Man, the World, by acting on which Man puts 
forth all his energy and works out his progress. Humanity 
can be traced indeed in every man and child; and in some 
sort we can find an incarnation of Humanity in every being 
of our race. 

So, too, if a Human Synthesis does not treat the abstract 
notion of Evolution as the centre of its faith, it includes 
Evolution in every rational sense, inasmuch as it puts before 
our eyes perpetually, not the idea of a materialistic scries 



84 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of cosmical laws, but the real image of our great human whole, 
itself passing in a course of evolution to a higher state of 
being, whilst it gains every day a fuller command over that 
unbroken reign of law which the material world presents, 
and beneficently applies that command to its own well-being. 

A Human Synthesis reaches to all parts of our nature 
equally. What can be a nobler spur to perseverance in in- 
tellectual effort, bracing and tempering it to its duty, than 
the sense that all we learn and all we teach is but the adding 
a new stone in the vast cathedral of intellectual combination, 
the edifice which was begun 10,000 years ago, and grows 
upward, increasing in completeness and richness with each 
generation ? What better guide need we in the task of giving 
due correlation to our knowledge than the continual remem- 
brance of the subtle complexity with which the sciences have 
worked together and reacted each on one another, and have 
combined together in ways so mysterious, and yet so real, 
for the practical accomplishment of human good? 

The historic side of science, its moral power, its services 
to human nature, its unwearied and almost logical evolution, 
its intimate union with all that is stable and real in Humanity 
— these are all lighted up with a new colour by a Human 
Creed : these hard, cold truths are ennobled by it, moralised, 
humanised. Science becomes in our eyes (not the godless 
puffing up of earthly reason), but in a new sense, sacred, be- 
neficent, mighty ; for we see it ever clothed in a vesture of great 
human qualities and high associations with human destiny. 
Sacred, we may say, by virtue of the great lives that have 
been given up for it by countless martyrs of science, myriads 
of unknown martyrs no less than the great known chiefs 
and captains in the battle : beautiful, by virtue of the ex- 
quisite subtlety and invention of its handiwork : beneficent, 
by virtue of the incalculable blessings that it has shed upon 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 85 

our once puny race : mighty, by virtue of the almost mirac- 
ulous power with which it has endowed a species that was 
once as the Bushman and the Fuegian. 

If this Human Synthesis show us law wherever we turn, 
and thereby sheds throughout the whole intellectual system 
a sense of rest, reality, utility, still it does not leave our hearts 
for ever in presence of a hard world of logical formulae and 
physical sequence. It shows us at once law in Man, and 
Man himself the dispenser of law — using it for his own 
purposes, with infinite versatility and command, submitting 
himself with noble freedom and humility to its inevitable 
limits, and yet in the end the true master of the fixed con- 
ditions within which he finds his life has been cast, over- 
coming Nature, as Bacon says, by yielding to her wisely : 
at last, splendidly triumphant, not over law, nor in spite of 
law, but by means of law — Man being himself the most 
beautiful and sublime illustration of law, and yet with his 
human will and his human brain and heart having that 
which is never in all its parts utterly commensurable with 
law, nor, in its ultmate mysteries, altogether explicable by 
law. 

It is one of the most daring of the modern attempts to 
harmonise Theology and Science (chimerical and indeed un- 
thinkable as the attempt itself may be judged) that God 
may be reconciled with the Reign of Law by calling Laws 
the thoughts of the Divine Mind, so that the physical laws 
of the world and the laws of human evolution are not poten- 
tialities inherent in things and in men, but are themselves 
the wishes and ideas of Omnipotence. In this way a some- 
what sophistical Pantheism has sought to save at once the 
admitted immutability of law, its omnipresence, and the free 
will of a Divine Providence. The invariable sequences that 
science reveals in all things are not, we are told, external to 



86 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

the Creator, but are simply the way in which he chooses to 
work and to think. They who put this forth have hardly, one 
would judge, worked out all the consequences of this some- 
what irreverent theology, which would make the Black Death, 
the earthquake of Lisbon, and the Reign of Terror, some out 
of many of the less praiseworthy thoughts of the Creator. 

Chimerical as this notion is when applied to an All- Good 
Providence, there is a certain sense in which we may say that 
the laws we observe in ail things are indeed the thoughts 
of Humanity. Laws of Nature are not so much the expres- 
sion of absolute realities in the nature of things (of this we 
know nothing absolutely), but they are those relations which 
the human intellect has perceived in co-ordinating phenomena 
of all kinds. They are the apparent connection of things 
such as we detect them by observation. 

Man is most certainly not omnipotent; and therefore 
he is not responsible for the confusions and imperfections 
which he sees as results of various laws : but which he cannot 
remove. He is not all-good, and his goodness is compatible 
with the social catastrophies of which his imperfect qualities 
make him the victim. The whole sphere of law is nothing but 
the outcome of the human intelligence applied to the world 
of phenomena. It is the intellectual aspect of Humanity. 
It is Humanity thinking. 

On the other hand, Theology, in presenting us with a centre 
of inscrutable Godhead, really leaves the intellect out of its 
scheme, or else bids it serve in limits and fetters, for the 
modern intelligence has no meaning but in extending and 
consolidating the realms of law. A metaphysical Pantheism 
presents us with no real centre or motive at all. It leaves the 
intellect free, but it supplies it with no adequate cause for 
activity, no source for its inspirations, no object for its efforts. 
A logical Materialism gives us Law without God, as Theology 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 87 

had given us God without Law ; but it leaves us without any- 
lofty affection whereby the exercise of the intellect can be 
ennobled, or that of the activity made moral. 

A Human Synthesis (that is, Humanity as the centre of 
Thought and Life) gives us both the Reign of Law and a 
minister of law in a Human Providence. And this Providence 
and this Law in no way exclude each other. Far from being 
incompatible, each is the complement of the other, for they 
are mutually dependent. The intellect has no check to its 
freedom in its pursuit of law, and it finds a worthy subject 
of its reverence in the being which is the real discoverer 
and subjective author of law. The spirit of worship is 
called out and stimulated; but it is never allowed to carry 
the nature beyond the realities of science. The active in- 
stincts of our nature are sanctified and fortified by the splendid 
intellectual resources which they find in their service, by the 
noble work of regeneration to which the generous instincts 
impel them. 

Such are some of the relations and the harmonies that result 
from a human centre to thought. Of necessity it makes 
philosophy real, organic, useful, and relative. For it puts 
an end to the eternal search after absolute truth, and to those 
dissolving views of endless Hypothesis which are the only 
avenue to Absolute knowledge and to knowledge of the Ab- 
solute. Man as the great centre makes everything real. 
The Philosophy of man must be demonstrated, verified, 
brought to the test of experience. It must have a common 
purpose running through it ; it is not satisfied with simple 
speculation ; it has regard to the good of Man, will be limited 
by human powers, and be relative to mundane conditions. 
In every possible sense of the term, we need to put an end to 
all philosophies of things in themselves — of Dinge an sick: we 
need to know things as Man sees them, and as they affect Man. 



88 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Thus also science will feel a new impetus, for science is 
never really great except in due relation to philosophy, to 
general theory, and Man's real necessities and demands. 
Nothing was ever done for science greater than what was 
done by the philosophers, by Aristotle, Descartes, Bacon, 
Hobbes, Locke, Leibnitz, Hume, Kant, Diderot, Hegel, 
and Comte : the authors these of the great creative ideas in 
general philosophy. Nor was any period of science so fruit- 
ful as that which followed the great resettlements of human 
society; the Empires of the Macedonians and that of the 
Caesars, the formation of modern society, and finally the in- 
dustrial development of the last century. The claim of some 
modern men of science to have their studies regarded as the 
solitary manifestation of individual genius, independent of 
philosophy and general classification, impatient of any social 
impulse, and of all synthetic direction, is the last pettiness 
of pedantic specialism. When a real classification and har- 
mony of the sciences has become an accepted truth, when a 
sound general philosophy and a vitalising religion has come 
to pervade and dignify every corner and bypath of science, 
it will exhibit a breadth and elevation unknown to academies 
and the competitors for puerile prizes. 

All that is needed is for each worker in every science to be 
filled with a living sense of its relation to the whole scheme 
of Human Thought and its sacred importance to the future 
of Human Life. It is a mockery to pretend that this con- 
stant association of the daily work of each of us with all that 
is high in general philosophy and in social duty would be to 
narrow or to trammel the student in his task. Limitation 
of the freedom of all human thought by moral oppression is 
as odious as limitation by legal persecution. We ask only 
for an adequate education and an enlightened social standard 
of labour. The aim of labour that we would see is so big 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 89 

that no sense of narrowness could arise from its constant 
presence and influence. It demands only this: the 
habit of looking at the organic spirit of all science, at its 
relations to the whole of human thought, to be conscious of its 
high religious value, to bear in mind its magnificent history 
of continual and correlated effort, to be ready to hear the cry 
of humanity for the removal of pressing evils, for the dis- 
covery of further boons, to be saturated through and through 
with the belief that the whole career of science has been one 
of usefulness, reality, beneficence. Assuredly science has 
nothing to lose, everything to gain, by formally and visibly 
enrolling itself in the service of Humanity. 

But the great effect of the acceptance of a Human Synthesis 
will be on life as a whole, moral and active life, even more 
than on the intellectual life. What is it that now lies at the 
root of all our complaints and our wants? It is the breach 
of correspondence and common purpose throughout our 
human society and our individual powers. All schools alike 
complain. Not one but all cry out for greater co-operation 
between classes and institutions, greater harmony and unity 
in our spirits within us. The preachers of all the theologies 
complain that there is no concord without or within. Ten 
thousand pulpits bewail the pride and hardness of the in- 
tellect, its defiance of God, its indifference to His worship. 

They complain as much of the active instincts, of self-will 
and hardness of heart, disregard of duty, mercy, God. The 
metaphysicians languidly complain of utilitarian aims, 
sordid indifference to abstract thought, to the fine beauty 
of a meditative existence. On their side, the materialists 
complain of the reign of superstition, of the passion for re- 
ligious excitement, of the nightmares and the hallucinations 
that persist in spite of science, in the teeth of truth. 

So all are dissatisfied with our intellectual and social state 



90 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

as it is. No school, or Church, or party pretends to undivided 
sway; all complain that they are checked or baffled by the 
rest. To a really consistent theology, the eagerness of science 
to know, the zeal of the world in its business, are all waste. 
He to whom the Judgment is intensely real and awfully 
near cannot but look on research as ungodly trifling; on 
industry, commerce, manufacture, politics, as perilous dis- 
tractions from spiritual hopes. To the true theological 
devotee three-fourths of life are a mistake, a curse, a snare ; 
and if the bulk of professing believers openly ridicule such 
inhuman extravagance, it is simply that the bulk of profess- 
ing believers do not believe their own religion. To the 
metaphysical enthusiast, the activities of life are unworthy 
of the higher minds, the moral devotions of the pious betray 
a want of enlightenment. To the materialist, the devotion, 
the conviction, the consolations, the ecstasies of the pious 
men and women around him are hallucination, anachronism, 
degradation. 

So each of these leading schools of thought protests how 
partial is their own grasp over the world of to-day. Each 
admits that life, as they conceive it, is still marred, wasted, 
depraved, by the persistence of some other type which undoes 
so much of their own work, bars the way, baffles their la- 
bours, and turns them to a contrary issue. 

What a waste is life under this era of cross-purposes, and 
competing ideals, and rival systems of faith ! The intel- 
lectual systems scorn the noblest emotions and all schemes 
of life that are based on them; the active and energetic 
schemes of life coolly push aside these emotions, and are 
half suspicious of the practical usefulness of the intel- 
lectual schemes. The emotional systems, for their part, 
resolutely turn from the decisions of the intellectual, and 
persist in adoring, against all the proofs and all the 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 9 1 

realities, that which they can hardly pretend any longer to 
believe in. 

What a waste, discord, in human life is this ! We should 
suppose that the one thing to which the deeper brains and 
natures of our race would betake themselves as of one accord 
would be this : to recover, if it might be, the lost sense of 
unity in human life, to knit up again together activity, in- 
tellect, enthusiasm, so that once more we might each of us 
feel one, feel that human society was one, as men felt in the 
days of Abraham, or of Homer, or of Charlemagne, when at 
least the various faculties and provinces of Man's nature were 
not at open war with each other, seeking each to silence the 
other. One could imagine almost that we should have heard 
this nineteenth century calling aloud with groans, like the 
Pilgrim of the seventeenth century, "What shall I do to be 
saved? who shall deliver me from the wrath to come?" 
Why does it not cry aloud to be saved from wasted life on 
earth, to be delivered from the moral chaos of a society really 
at war with itself, its best powers counteracting each other? 

The nineteenth century did not cry out for salvation, for 
it was willing to believe that it was saved, and would do 
well, if only sundry pernicious principles could be suppressed. 
Each one of the great types of life still holds itself certain 
to succeed at last, if it can only manage to exterminate the 
rest. Theology still thinks it will ultimately get the better 
of Pantheism, and of Materialism, and will yet plant God 
securely on the throne of a regenerated (i.e. a tamed) Thought 
and Will ; but to do this the intellectual and active nature of 
Man must bow to the commands of a devout and ecstatic 
spirit. Metaphysics still hope for the ultimate enlighten- 
ment of all human minds, and the final overthrow of dog- 
matic formalism and utilitarian vulgarity. Materialism 
is confident also that the reign of physical law will ultimately 



92 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

extirpate religion; and having done that, will one day no 
doubt succeed in making our industrial existence a more 
human and shapely thing than it is. 

The truly Human Synthesis is far from seeking the extinc- 
tion of any one of these three principles. It would satisfy 
the spirit of Devotion, the Intelligence, the Energy, equally, 
and all together. It ends the secular conflict by conciliation, 
by a true consolidation, not by giving victory to any one. 
For it holds out to all the real image of an idealised Humanity 
(that is, the ordered assemblage of all the brains, wills, and 
labours of the human race, past, present, and to come) as 
the centre whereto all efforts must converge, and the source of 
Man's best attainments. It supplies our intellectual work 
at once with material and with purpose ; our emotional zeal 
with object and inspiration; our practical labour with a 
noble function. This unity of being is summed up in the 
formula — "Act under the influence of Affection; and think, 
in order to act." 

Thus understood, Man thinks by the aid of Humanity, 
from which the substance of his thoughts is derived; he 
thinks for Humanity, which alone can give a noble purpose 
to thought; he orders his thoughts to accord with life by 
referring all to Humanity. Man can honour and love Hu- 
manity, the visible author and minister of all that he possesses 
and hopes. So too Man works for Humanity, the natural 
object of all work, the labour which alone is always noble, 
always useful, and never unhappy. 

Here is a true Synthesis, or converging point in life. What 
other complete Synthesis can we imagine? Let us try by 
each of these three great faculties of our nature any one of the 
great ideas which have satisfied men in the Past, and satisfy 
so many still. Man has honoured and loved God, as he has 
honoured and loved nothing else. Nay, let us rejoice that 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 93 

the deep human instincts survive in the wreck of Theology, 
that Man still can honour and love God. But where is the 
man who can honestly say, looking round on the vast ac- 
cumulation of modern knowledge, that he co-ordinates all 
his thoughts round the image of God, that the idea of God 
gives him a rational theory of all his acquirements, that he 
thinks for the service of God, and can see that service ful- 
filled in every thought? 

Or who can say, in the whirl of our modern industrial ac- 
tivity, that he works and toils for God, that God is the natural 
object of all human labour, that each product of his hands is 
a new offering to his Creator's well-being, that it is a comfort 
and a use to an omnipotent Providence ? Who can utter any 
of these phrases in a literal sense, in any but a sophistical and 
hysterical way? 

Turn to the Metaphysical Synthesis, the philosophy of 
ultimate being, or any of the cloudy theisms of the day. Who 
can say that Man thinks by the aid of Absolute Reason, or by 
a First Cause so sublime that does not interfere with mundane 
laws; that these " defecated" residua of fastidious logic 
enable a man to co-ordinate his thoughts, group the laws of 
Nature, or give him the mutual relations of the sciences ? And 
further, what mockery is implied in the question — Can any 
man honestly pretend that he loves the Absolute, or any such 
essence as he finds remaining after a long course of abstract 
meditation; much less can any one say that the Absolute 
is the natural object of all earthly labour? 

What a tissue of verbiage and sophistry do these grand 
" residua" of the philosophers become, when we place them 
face to face with the other sides of human nature, and ask 
how they stand to affection, and to work, to industry, to duty ! 

Let us again turn to the Materialist Synthesis, if Synthesis 
the materialists permit at all. I mean by a materialist syn- 



94 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

thesis any central idea, law, force, or tendency which is 
supposed to be the ultimate reality in the Universe, to which 
all laws can be subordinated, and to which all phenomena 
can be referred, but which presents us with no dominant idea 
of Affection, Sympathy, and Will. Any synthesis that omits 
these qualities, or fails to place them at the top, is a Materialist 
Synthesis. 

Now there are all kinds of forms of such a synthesis. 
Evolution is a familiar example. Men of great power and 
high character tell us that they think the clearer by the light 
of Evolution, that all their thoughts flow from the centre of 
Evolution, that Evolution truly co-ordinates their ideas. 
Accordingly it is to them the real Synthesis, and, excepting 
an ejaculation to save the Unknowable, it is all the Synthesis 
they need. 

Very good ! Evolution may very likely serve as an intel- 
lectual Synthesis; but is it a moral and practical Synthesis? 
Can any man pretend to say that he loves, honours, adores 
Evolution ; that the image of it is about his bed and his path, 
in his down-sitting and in his up-rising, that it touches his 
heart, rouses him to noble effort, purifies him with a sense of 
great Tenderness and great Self-sacrifice? Can any man, 
without laughing, thus speak of Evolution, or of the Law of 
Differentiation, or of the Survival of the Fittest? These 
potent generalisations of cosmical science are discoveries 
of a high order. But the girl or the child whose tender spirit 
has drunk deep at the fountains which gave us the Morning 
and the Evening Hymn, reaches to heights and depths of 
human nature, and knows vast regions of truth and power, 
wherein these potent generalisations can as little enter as a 
toad or a piece of quartz. 

Much less can any say that Evolution, Differentiation, 
Survival, or any general cosmical principle whatever can 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 95 

be treated as the natural object of all social work, that it can 
be looked on as the one aim of labour, the sanction of human 
industry, the guarantee of happiness in labour? Does any 
such cosmical principle bring us nearer by one jot to the 
settlement of any single industrial problem? Does it not 
leave all practical problems to the law of the strongest ? 

In what sense, then, is Evolution a synthesis, if we desire to 
embrace in our synthesis the whole of the powers of Man? 
Try any one of the metaphysical or the materialist central 
ideas, and ask what possible power they can have over the 
greater outbursts of the human heart ? Are we, then, to tear 
up out of our idea of human nature, and cast aside as an 
effete tendency, together with slavery, polygamy, and can- 
nibalism, the world-old instincts of men and women for 
Devotion, Self-sacrifice, Adoration, the overmastering passion 
of well-doing, and sympathy, and care for others, the hum- 
bling of the spirit of self, veneration for great benevolence, 
gratitude for great services — in a word, the outpouring 
of the Soul towards a good Providence, which has been known 
to Man since the days of the Cave-men under a thousand 
forms of religion ? 

"Then," cry the orthodox, and those who imagine they 
can save the essence of orthodoxy, by enveloping every scien- 
tific difficulty in a cloud of phrases, "theology does give us 
such a synthesis in the idea of a Creating and Ruling God ; 
accept with us this centre of affections of which you admit the 
ubiquity and the power !" 

Here, alas ! comes in the other part of the dilemma. The 
theological synthesis is just as flagrantly and hopelessly 
impotent in the whole mental and practical sphere of Man 
as the materialist synthesis is impotent in the devotional 
sphere. And that even by the tacit admission of theologians 
and pietists themselves. In ages when the theological idea 



96 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

was really dominant, it did profess to be a complete synthesis 
of Man's life, and was distinctly accepted as such. The 
thought of God, the love of God, was honestly taken by 
powerful brains and characters to be the real centre of all 
thoughts, and not only of all love and hope, but of all work 
and of all enjoyment also. Abraham and David, St. Paul 
and St. Bernard, Mahomet and Luther, perhaps even Fenelon 
and Ken, did literally in their hearts believe the love of God 
to be the true explanation of all Man's knowledge, and the 
proper object of every human effort. 

But now, since science has surrounded our lives with such 
a concurrent mass of correlated law, and this sense of law 
is so widespread and familiar to the daily thought of the most 
ignorant; now, since our social existence has so developed, 
and has so clothed with noble colours the free resources of 
Man's manifold powers, now it is simply impossible to find 
the Creator in every thought, God in every act. The most 
mystical of theologians, the most austere of devotees, does 
not ask us to do so. Common sense is too overwhelming 
to be resisted. Piety itself adopts its language; orthodox 
authority deprecates the exaggeration of theology. The 
Pope alone holds out, and discharges a Syllabus now and then. 
But bishops, priests, and deacons, for the most part, sweep 
theology away from the whole field of systematic thought and 
active life. Science, they say, explains the laws of Nature 
and the laws of society; social motives are an adequate 
explanation of worldly activity. All we ask, say they, as 
sensible theologians, is to reserve the idea of God and the 
Scheme of Man's Salvation for the hours that are given to 
meditation and prayer, to the spiritual sphere alone. 

In other words, the idea of God, which, when theology 
was a Synthesis, filled the whole human sphere, has now, 
even in the hearts of the most devout, shrunk into one part 



THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS 97 

of human nature, one aspect of life, and that one which all 
but a Trappist monk or an Indian fakir would dmit to be 
an occasional, not a continuous, aspect of life. It follows 
that Theology, or the idea of Divine Providence, does not 
now pretend to supply Man with a complete Synthesis for his 
whole life, even in the minds of those who make the largest 
claims for Divine Providence, and who feel its power over 
their hearts most profoundly and most constantly. 

This, at length, is the conclusion to which our argument 
has led us. There is discoverable in human and mundane 
things no Synthesis but one, and that is a Human Synthesis. 
A true synthesis must, if it is to concentrate human life, be 
coextensive with human nature; it must be real; it must 
perfectly submit to logical verification ; it must directly 
appeal to the whole range of thought, of affection, of energy ; 
it must harmonise all these to one end ; and finally, that one 
end must be such as can inspire our noblest emotions of Love 
and Veneration. The tests of a true synthesis are these: 
completeness, reality, truth, unity, sympathy. These tests 
and qualities are presented, we say, by one ideal alone, the 
ideal of a transfigured Humanity, in which the Past and the 
Future are bound up, in which the life of each one of us is 
incorporated and dignified, by which its fruits may be in- 
definitely continued. 



VI 

LEWES' PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND l 

Amidst all the dispersive tendencies of the spirit of detail 
in science we may note a growing anxiety to secure a con- 
structive philosophy. This thirst after an organisation of 
knowledge is becoming more conscious and more defined, 
even whilst the daily accumulation of materials seems to 
make the task more severe. And the sphere which this 
constructive tendency is claiming for itself grows ever wider, 
until it sweeps into its domain not merely knowledge, but 
life. It is towards a Religion as much as a Philosophy that 
systematic thought is tending, towards a co-ordination of 
society as well as towards a co-ordination of ideas. It is now 
a quarter of a century since Auguste Comte declared that 
the end of true Philosophy was to organise human life in all 
its aspects collectively, whether intellectual, affective, or 
active. And a stimulus has thereby been given to all the 
higher thought of the generation, even amongst those who 
were willing to accept nothing from the founder of Positivism. 

In Germany, Hegel, from a different point of view, directed 
the activity of thought towards an arrangement of all human 
ideas, at once comprehensive and organic. In all parts of 
Europe, Philosophy and Science have long been showing 
a disposition not only to maintain the independence of their 
specific territory from the invasion of Religion, but to invade 

1 Problems of Life and Mind, by George Henry Lewes. First Series. 
The Foundation of a Creed, vol. i. Second edition. Trubner. 1874. 

98 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND 99 

and annex the religious kingdom for themselves. In our 
own country, Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the words of Mr. 
Lewes, "is now for the first time deliberately making the 
attempt to found a Philosophy." Students of his system, 
which he calls "synthetic philosophy," do not forget that it 
opens with a scheme for the reconciliation of Science with 
Religion — that "weft running through the warp of human 
history" — and that he adds a new ecclesiastical, ceremonial, 
and industrial organisation. On every side this synthetic 
character of thought is working itself to the front. The 
higher scientific thought is more and more occupied with 
problems of the correlation, equivalence, and correspondence 
of forces, of the evolution, sequences, and homologies of 
organic and inorganic life. The higher philosophy now 
everywhere starts with a religion, and ends with a synthesis of 
society. Philosophy is thus visibly transforming itself. 
Its business is no longer confined to generalise science. It 
is seeking to found a system of Life. 

This tendency is most strikingly displayed in Mr. Lewes' 
last work; and in some respects he must be said to carry 
the religious claim of positive philosophy far higher than has 
yet been done by any English man of science. Most significant 
is the title of the book Problems oj Lije and Mind — the 
Foundations oj a Creed. And it opens with the statement that 
"the great desire of this age is for a doctrine which may serve 
to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape 
our lives, so that Conduct may really be the consequence of 
Belief." Mr. Lewes follows those who "consider that Reli- 
gion will continue to regulate the evolution of Humanity"; 
occupying a position similar to the one it occupied in the 
past, and express the highest thought of the time (p. 3). It will 
be a transformed Religion, "a Religion founded on Science 
expressing at each stage what is known of the world and of 



100 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Man" {id). The precise bearing of the book before us upon 
this general conception of Philosophy as the reconciliation 
or rather consolidation of religion with science, may be 
gathered from the following passage : — 

In conclusion, I may here simply state my conviction that the phi- 
losophy, in the construction of which the efforts of all nations converge, 
is that positive philosophy which began with Kepler and Galileo, Des- 
cartes and Bacon, and was first reduced to a system by Auguste Comte; 
the doctrine embracing the world, man, and society on one homogeneous 
method. The extension and perfection of this doctrine is the work of 
the future. The following pages are animated by the desire of extend- 
ing positive procedures to those outlying questions which hitherto have 
been either ignored, or pronounced incapable of incorporation with the 
positive doctrine (page 86). 

In the face of a passage like this, consistent as it is with 
every word in the volume before us, it was a bold rather than 
a happy thought to announce to the world, as has been done 
in more than one quarter, that Mr. Lewes had recanted his 
empirical philosophy, and had become a convert to the Spec- 
ulative method of a priori Metaphysics. There was joy 
in the Hegelian heaven over the one Positivist who had re- 
pented more than over the ninety and nine just metaphysicians 
who need no repentance. Such unusual license even for 
a priori speculation suggested the idea that some serene jest 
had been evolved among the denizens of that beatific cloud- 
land, but a little collation of pages disclosed the fact that the 
conversion of Mr. Lewes had been deduced from a merely 
empirical confusion of his words. A contemporary, who 
is wont to treat of the higher philosophy with more than phil- 
osophic gravity, announced with all the air of chastened ex- 
ultation, that Mr. Lewes emphatically renounced what he 
had himself described as "the cardinal position of the Positive 
Philosophy," and even gave in his adhesion to the objective 
logic of Hegel. 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND IOI 

Turning to the pages of Mr. Lewes, what we found him 
asserting was, that "the exclusion of all metempirical ques- 
tions, and the rejection of the metempirical method, is the 
cardinal position of the Positive Philosophy" (p. 62). This 
is of course quite true, but neither in this passage, nor in any 
word of the entire volume, is there the remotest suggestion 
that Mr. Lewes himself adopts either the metempirical 
method, or metempirical questions. His book, from be- 
ginning to end, is a protest against both. His first rule of 
philosophy is this — "No problem to be mooted unless it be 
presented in terms 0} experience, and be capable of empirical 
investigation" (p. 89). It is singular how any one who had 
got as far as page 89 of Mr. Lewes' book could seriously assure 
us that he had abandoned "the cardinal position of the posi- 
tive philosophy," by which he tells us that he means the 
exclusion of all metempirical methods. What Mr. Lewes 
does say that he abandons is simply the opinion that certain 
problems — Matter, Force, Cause, etc. — are incapable of 
being treated on empirical or positive methods. He dissents 
from Comte so far in believing that there are further grounds 
available for positive methods to occupy, but this opinion as 
to the extent of its area is not a "cardinal position of 
the positive philosophy," nor does Mr. Lewes ever speak of 
it as such. In a word, when Mr. Lewes tells us that the 
positive philosophy can solve more questions than even M, 
Comte thought it could, we are told that he is thereby aban- 
doning "the cardinal position of the positive philosophy." 

In the same way we are assured that Mr. Lewes is a con- 
vert to the objective Logic of Hegel, though on page 19 he 
tells us that Hegel "reverses the principle I am here proclaim- 
ing"; and though he cites with approval Trendlenberg's 
opinion respecting the Hegelian procedure, "thai it cannot 
give us what it promises, because its promises are beyond 



102 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

human scope " (page 26). Our Hegelian friends have as good 
ground for assuring us that Mr. Lewes has abandoned the 
positive philosophy and adopted the Logic of Hegel, as the 
Pope would have for assuring us that he had converted 
Mr. Lewes to the Syllabus, inasmuch as he found in the 
book before us, that "Religion will continue to regulate the 
evolution of Humanity." 

But to return to the serious consideration of Mr. Lewes' 
method. It may be simply stated thus : — Certain meta- 
physical problems of Matter, Force, Cause, Law, Soul, etc., 
have been hitherto regarded as outside the pale of science, 
and have been treated as insoluble by the Philosophy of 
Experience. Mr. Lewes himself has long regarded them as 
insoluble, and his well-known history of Philosophy is a series 
of refutations of all the solutions offered on unscientific 
methods. He now thinks that these problems, or certain 
aspects of them, can be brought within the pale of science, 
and can be treated strictly on scientific methods by the canons 
of the Philosophy of Experience. There is in this proposal 
no trace of abandonment, either of the method or the 
canons of positive reasoning. On the contrary, he has 
never insisted upon these with so much precision or with 
equal elaboration. He calls it no retreat, but a change of 
front. Indeed, it is rather a movement forward than a 
movement back. 

That which is new is the attempt to extend the scientific 
analysis to questions which science has hitherto left to Meta- 
physics. In his own words, "the novelty of the procedure 
followed in this work consists in treating these problems on 
the same method as that followed in science." The object 
proposed is to clear the ground of the metaphysical obstacles 
to thought, by bringing them under the terms and methods 
which extend to all other thought; and to wrest its last 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND IO3 

ground from the a priori philosophy by reducing it to the 
forms of a posteriori reasoning. This claim would amount, 
as Professor Clifford has said, to a revolution in Psychology. 
But the novelty, if the claim is made good, consists in the 
application of an old method of philosophy to a field in which 
it has not been attempted, and not, as was so crudely sug- 
gested, in giving up any part of the method of which Mr. 
Lewes is a prominent exponent. 

The present writer must here pause to express his envy 
for those accomplished critics who master a new presentation 
in philosophy or logic along with the morning paper, and 
have labelled it for ever in a dozen trenchant sentences before 
they sit down to dinner. When, as it sometimes happens, 
even in utilitarian England, a man of rare erudition and 
acuteness, who has passed the best years of his life inter apices 
philosophies, finally resumes in meditated phrases the sum 
of all his thoughts, when he presents to us a new method 
of research, or puts old methods to new uses, it is perhaps 
not a morning's work duly to master his meaning, nor is his 
place in philosophy to be assigned with the same lordly 
facility with which a place in the editorial heaven or hell is 
adjudged to the last new novel. 

The present writer will excuse himself from any ex cathedrd 
judgment how far Mr. Lewes has effected the revolution in 
Psychology which he claims ; and if he has done so, what is 
its precise philosophical utility. Whether or not Mr. Lewes 
has solved the questions which metaphysicians have attacked 
for so many ages in vain, can indeed be hardly determined 
until we see the use which he makes of his solutions in the 
volumes which are yet to appear. Whether he has solved 
them to the satisfaction of metaphysicians, and thus, as he 
trusts, has assuaged the thirst which eternally calls for satis- 
faction, can only be decided when time has shown us if the 



104 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

minds which are eager with these questions are content to 
rest with the answers that he gives them. 

One thing is sufficiently clear. Although Mr. Lewes has 
retained the name of Metaphysics, and offers his solution of 
what are universally called the problems of Metaphysics, 
he shows himself from title-page to colophon an unflinching 
adherent of the positive methods, and never travels a hair's- 
breadth from his canons which bind truth to experience. 
In his claim to have swept metaphysics into the fold of science, 
he is never found to be using metempirical expedients. 
Whether or not he has domesticated the untamed metaphys- 
ical Pegasus, and harnessed him to the car of terrestrial 
science, we may leave to the future to decide; but we can 
say at once that he himself has never mounted the wild 
charger into the realms of cloudland, and if he has really 
got Pegasus as completely in hand as he thinks, he himself is 
certainly safe on mother earth. 

With regard to the claim of novelty in the application of 
scientific procedures to metaphysical problems, it must be 
taken in all the limitations imposed by the question of what, 
in Mr. Lewes' hands, these metaphysical problems really 
amount to. Now, it is certain that Mr. Herbert Spencer, in 
his Synthetic Philosophy generally, and in his Psychology 
in particular, has examined nearly all the problems of Mr. 
Lewes' present volume, and certainly he has treated them on 
kindred data and with similar methods. And although 
Mr. Spencer has relegated in his First Principles certain 
questions to the insoluble and Unknowable, whilst Mr. 
Lewes appears to hold them capable of some scientific solu- 
tion ; yet the difference between the two points of view does 
not appear to be great, when we observe that Mr. Lewes 
admits in every one of these questions a transcendental and 
unknowable element which he ejects from the field, and this 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND 



105 



transcendental element is precisely that part of the question 
of which solution is specially craved. 

Again, when Mr. Lewes argues against Comte's rejection 
of metaphysical problems, and claims to have now for the 
first time brought them under positive treatment, it will not 
be forgotten that throughout the Politique Positive nearly 
all the questions treated in this volume by Mr. Lewes have 
been discussed by Comte, not as is here done explicitly and 
apart from their application to the sciences, but implicitly 
and along with their practical working. This is obviously 
true of the Rules of Philosophising (pp. 88-106), which in 
some sort answer to the Philosophie premiere of Comte; 
and so almost the whole of the points noticed in Problem I. 
(which occupies more than half the volume) are questions 
which have been more or less distinctly treated by Comte. 
The real difference between Mr. Lewes' view and that of 
Comte is not that Mr. Lewes has treated problems which 
Comte has ignored, but rather that Mr. Lewes, like Mr. 
Spencer, has placed their treatment in a regularly methodised 
department, instead of treating them incidentally amongst 
the sciences, and that Mr. Lewes thinks there should be a 
special Logic of those highest generalisations, whilst Comte 
would leave them distributed throughout the logic of the 
different sciences. This is, no doubt, a very real and impor- 
tant difference; but it is a difference of philosophical ar- 
rangement, not a difference of philosophical aim. 

One remark I have to offer to Air. Lewes' consideration. 
He asserts a claim to have treated metaphysical problems 
on strictly scientific methods; and his purpose is to put an 
end for ever to the disturbance caused to thought by the 
presence of unsatisfied questions that will not be suppressed. 
Metaphysics, he says, must be transformed or stamped out of 
existence. The latter process has not succeeded, and he 



106 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

proposes to try the former. To this end his method is to 
eject from the field in every problem the unknowable ele- 
ment. He calls this the transcendental element, and the 
" unexplored remainder"; and he shows how familiar to 
mathematicians is the procedure of working problems with 
unknown quantities, whilst taking care that these elements 
are not allowed to disturb the calculations of the known 
quantities. In every question presented to us, says Mr. 
Lewes, there is this transcendental element, " elements lying 
beyond all possible appreciation, because incapable of being 
brought within the range of sense and inference" — the 
unknowable in fact. These, he says, are to be set aside, 
and are not allowed in any way to enter into the explanation. 
These metaphysical problems, he says, Matter and Motion, 
Force and Cause, have also their transcendental elements; 
and it is the province of metaphysics to demarcate these 
from the known and knowable elements. Mr. Lewes' 
method is to disengage from each of these problems the un- 
knowable element, "the elements that lie beyond all reduction 
to experience," and then to solve the remainder of the prob- 
lem. Every question, he says, when stated in terms of ex- 
perience, is capable of an answer on the experiential method. 
And no doubt Mr. Lewes has abundantly satisfied us of this. 
But will this satisfy the metaphysical minds who are wont to 
propound these problems? Is it not precisely this tran- 
scendental, this irreducible, this supra-experiential, this un- 
knowable element which is the very thing they cherish? 
The true metaphysician regards it as the function of Phi- 
losophy to treat this very transcendental element in its de- 
tachment apart from experience. He says if you can state 
it in terms of experience, that alone shows that you have 
not got hold of the true problem at all. It is the ungraspable, 
the unstateable, the unrelated, the un-anything — das un- 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND 107 

begreifliches Geheimniss — which metaphysics vindicate as 
their own. Kant said that "the axioms and principles of 
Metaphysics must never be drawn from experience." And 
Hegel places the great problems, Freedom, Mind, God, "on 
a ground which belongs not to experience," for empiricism, 
he thinks, only gropes, instead of seeking truth in Thought 
itself. 

The whole line of metaphysicians after them continue to 
ask what is this transcendental element in all questions. 
They are the daughters of the horse-leech, whose cry is, 
Give, give; the abysmal maw of your true metaphysician 
simply gapes after this unknowable element just because it is 
infinite, because it lies beyond all possible appreciation. In 
the language of his great master, "you might as well attempt 
to squeeze water out of a pumice-stone as to get necessary 
and universal truth through experience." As Mr. Lewes 
points out, speculation craves a vision of the thing in itself, 
i.e. unrelated, or, in other words, as it does not and cannot 
exist. Of what avail, then, is it to tell a man in this frame 
of mind to state the problem in terms of experience, and then 
to solve it by the canons of experience ; to disengage the un- 
knowable element, and then throw it away? That which 
Mr. Lewes tells him to throw away as so much offal is his 
choice bit; Mr. Lewes' "unexplored remainder" is pre- 
cisely his quasitum in its true and pure form. To reduce 
the problem to terms of experience is just to kill the goose in 
search of the golden egg of metaphysics. 

So long as there is an unknown element, so long the spec- 
ulative craving will remain unsatisfied. To tell the true 
metaphysician that the unknown element is an unknowable 
element, is no satisfaction. It is like telling a man in a fiver 
to eat a mutton chop and not to think about drinking, as no 
drinking can ever slake his thirst. Mr. Lewes will hardly 



108 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

satisfy the fever patient better than Comte himself. Comte 
told him that his metaphysical thirst was incapable of being 
satisfied. Mr. Lewes tells him his metaphysical thirst 
has an element incapable of being satisfied. Comte said, 
Leave alone the insoluble problem. Mr. Lewes says, Leave 
alone the insoluble part of the problem. Ah ! cries the 
metaphysical opium-eater, It is just the unknowable which 
is the real charm ; it is that insoluble which is the problem. 
Alas ! it is the old fight between the mammal and the 
fish. "Come out of that watery element," cries Mr. 
Lewes to his piscine antagonist, "and we will settle 
matters on terra firma for ever." "It can only be settled 
in the water" croaks the fish; and executes a spiral wholly 
beyond mammalian resources. "If this is Philosophy, we 
do not know what Philosophy is!" groaned the Spectator 
out of the depths of its theological-metaphysical cavern. 
And it never said a truer word. 

At the same time, even if the metaphysical goose be not 
found to be persuaded to come flapping to be killed at the 
dilly-dilly call of experience, there is no doubt of the great 
value of the process Mr. Lewes has employed in separating 
the intelligible from the unintelligible part of the meta- 
physical problem. Both he and Mr. Herbert Spencer have 
done an inestimable service to minds wavering between 
scientific and unscientific habits of reasoning, by forcing the 
unscientific aspect of these questions into the most exact 
and limited ground, and by pushing the scientific aspect of 
them to the last possible point that it can reach. Mr. Lewes' 
singular brilliancy of illustration, and that sympathetic 
interest of his in the views he cannot share, ought to give him 
unusual power to reach minds wandering in the transcenden- 
tal wilderness. His proposal to retain the word metaphysics 
for "the ultimate generalisations of research," and to coin the 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND 109 

word metempirics for all that transcends the data of expe- 
rience, is most useful in his hands, as clearing up ideas and 
assisting to separate the elements which are soluble from 
those which are insoluble, even if he does not succeed in 
imposing them on Philosophy. The poor metaphysician 
has perhaps never before been so pushed, and hedged, and 
parried into the exact statement of his problem. And it is 
hard to say what more can be done. We find him driven 
back as in a sort of stale-mate to his last foothold of metem- 
pirics, where, indeed, no one can touch him, but whence he 
cannot escape, and where he can reach nothing. 

An interesting chapter in Mr. Lewes' book is that on the 
Rules of Philosophising (pp. 88-106), in which he extends 
the scope and amplifies the use of Newton's famous four 
rules prefixed to the third book of the Principia. Newton 
was obviously collecting only those generalisations which 
were immediately required for his purpose, and was not con- 
structing a complete system of philosophic generalisations. 
Mr. Lewes, in his fifteen rules, is also preparing the ground 
for his own logical method with a view to his immediate 
purpose. Mr. Lewes does not present them as an exhaus- 
tive collection of philosophical canons, and several of them, 
such as those numbered 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, are apparently cor- 
ollaries from other more general rules. A general comparison 
of these rules with the fifteen rules of Comte, which he calls 
Philosophic premiere (Pol. Pos. iv. c. 3), some of which Mr. 
Lewes embodies, throws much light on the purpose and scope 
of all such rules. Mr. Lewes' rules are apparently those 
canons of logic and checks upon error which will prove most 
useful for a giveD class of researches, and therefore arc cnt irely 
logical or subjective. Comte's fifteen rules profess to be the 
most dominant generalisations, both in the results and in the 
methods of science, and are consequently both objective 



HO PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

and subjective, some of them, in fact, being laws of history 
or social economy. Nothing could bring out more strongly 
Mr. Lewes' divergence from Comte in making these highest 
generalisations a special department or discipline. And in 
fact it would appear to us that this is the main logical dif- 
ference between Mr. Lewes and Comte, that Mr. Lewes 
would open the roll of Philosophy with a systematic treatment 
of the highest generalisations of thought, and an independent 
organon of proof, whilst in Comte very much the same 
problems, and very much the same conclusions, may be 
found embodied in his entire curriculum of the sciences. 

With regard to Mr. Lewes' treatment of the question 
between realism and idealism, how far, that is, does our mental 
picture of the Cosmos correspond with an objective reality, 
the question is in what degree Mr. Lewes' conception of 
reasoned realism differs from that transfigured realism which 
Mr. Herbert Spencer has expounded in one of the most 
luminous arguments of his work, 1 an argument which alone 
would mark him as one of the greatest masters of English 
philosophical language. Mr. Lewes' conclusion is that 
"the world conceived by us, the world in thought, is demon- 
strably not a picture of the existence lying outside of us, and 
unrelated to us : it is a transfiguration effected by the ideal 
construction of real presentation in Feeling." This surely 
is Mr. Spencer's transfigured realism, or would be if we 
substituted "symbolical" for "real" presentation, perhaps 
a very minor difference. 

Nor is this view divergent from Comte 's notion of the 
external world being seen transformed and as pictured in a 
mirror by the human intelligence, so that the laws of science 
are a representation of the order of the Cosmos only to the 
degree that we need to know it. As a follower of Comte, 

1 Psychology, part vii. c. 19. 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND in 

perhaps, one might object to Mr. Spencer's transfigured 
realism, and to Mr. Lewes' reasoned realism, that the one 
assumes a realism of the external somewhat too absolutely, 
whilst the other assumes the transformation of the picture 
somewhat too positively. A more hypothetical realism, 
or practical realism, still satisfies the present writer, viz. 
that our scientific conceptions within have a good working 
correspondence with an (assumed) reality without : it not 
concerning us, and we having no means of knowing, whether 
the absolute correspondence between them be great or small, 
or whether there be any absolute correspondence at all. 
All that we need is the utmost practical correspondence that 
experience shows us to be useful. 

Mr. Lewes' treatment of the whole question of the rela- 
tivity of knowledge, and of the sensational and a priori 
hypothesis, is particularly instructive, more especially as it 
leads us up to a real reconciliation and amalgamation of the 
two points of view, such as to point to the time when we shall 
cease to be troubled with further debate. On this and the 
kindred questions of realism, on the meaning of law, cause, 
force, and the like, it is cheering to find how steadily the field 
of divergence is narrowing itself in modern thought. There 
are points and aspects still in debate, modes of treatment 
and niceties of language yet unsettled; but for all those who 
start out from a scientific basis at all, the real convergences 
are more striking than the minor divergences. Thus Mr. 
Lewes' very ingenious and interesting chapter on the use 
and abuse of hypothesis, in which he argues against restric- 
tions imposed on it by Comte and Mill, is suggestive, as 
showing what are the kind of theoretic differences formulated 
by men, all of whom in practice follow much the same 
canons. 

But the part of Mr. Lewes' book which he appears to have 



112 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

worked with the greatest animation, and which is certainly 
the most brilliant, is that which treats of the ideal construc- 
tion in science. Without asserting that Mr. Lewes has put 
this view in any new form, it has perhaps never been ex- 
pounded to the world in so persuasive and telling a manner. 
And it needed this exposition, for although men of science 
for the most part are as familiar in theory as they are in 
practice with the scientific use of the imagination, the idea 
that positive science and positive philosophy is necessarily 
materialistic, is still a commonplace not only with theologians 
and the vulgar, but even with intelligent idealists. An 
Hegelian who for a wonder can write not only intelligibly 
but elegantly, Mr. William Graham, has lately spoken of 
"the Positivism of Comte, which puts its ban on the higher 
Philosophy, which will feed man's Thought only on perish- 
ing phenomena, and bids his Soul dream only of material 
comfort." * And there are still educated people who honestly 
believe that the philosophy of experience limits itself to what 
it can see and touch, and refuses to quit the sphere of the 
senses. 

It may do good to such, if anything can do them good, to 
go through Mr. Lewes' vindication of the Idealism of Science, 
as coming from one whom they are wont to call materialist, 
positivist, sensationalist, and all the other names at the com- 
mand of the "higher Philosophy." As Mr. Lewes shows, 
all science is an ideal construction very far removed from a 
real transcript of facts. "Its most absolute conclusions are 
formed from abstractions expressing modes of existence which 
never were, and never could be, real ; and are very often at 
variance with sensible experience." "Were the whole circle 
of the sciences to pass before us, each would in turn display 
the essentially ideal nature of its construction, and wide 

1 Idealism, by William Graham. Longmans, 1872. 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND 113 

departure from reality, either in its abstractions or in its 
hypotheses." And, in Mr. Lewes' view, the first step to- 
wards scientific certainty must be taken in a fiction, by an 
ideal type, or a bare hypothesis. "Science is in no respect 
a plain transcript of Reality, in no respect a picture of the 
External Order, but wholly an ideal construction, in which 
the manifold relations of Reals are taken up and assimilated 
by the mind, and then transformed into relations of ideas, 
so that the world of sense is changed into the world of 
Thought." 

A statement like this ought to satisfy the most seraphic of 
idealists that " sensationalism," as he insists on calling it, is 
just as ideal in the true sense, just as dependent on true in- 
ference in thought, just as far from being bound to the facts 
of sense, as any metempirics can be. "The philosopher," 
says Mr. Lewes, "looks away from the Visible and Actual, 
endeavouring to form a picture of the Invisible and Possible. 
He strives to discover not what we should see with sharpened 
faculties, but what would be seen were the constitution of 
things different from what it is. Philosophy is not an instru- 
ment like the telescope or microscope, intended only to 
magnify the powers of sense, but an organ of Imagination, 
by which to reconstruct an ideal world of Abstraction." 
Will not this satisfy even the idealists? 

What, then, is the difference, if we have here an experien- 
tialist like Mr. Lewes talking Idealism — how does this differ 
from any metempiricism ? The answer, in a word, is this, that 
the one is verified and constructed out of verified data, and 
with a view to final verification, and the other is not. "The 
abstractions and intuitions of science," says Mr. Lewes, 
"can always be verified; whereas the abstractions and in- 
tuitions which play a great part in metaphysics often want 
this basis." On the one hand, science and scientific, that 
1 



114 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

is experiential, Philosophy builds its abstractions on the real 
elements of experience; on the other, it is continually re- 
solving its ideal constructions into elements of sensible ex- 
perience. Science is in one sense just as completely a system 
of Idealism as metempirics itself, only its data have been 
first carefully verified by experience, and its conclusion are 
being perpetually resolved back and verified, and always 
are resolvable into and are verifiable by experience. In a 
word, our sciences are verified poems. 

This is indeed nothing else than that subjective synthesis 
which would appear to be Comte's real answer to the demands 
of metaphysical speculation. Now, although no one has gone 
further than Mr. Lewes in vindicating the truly ideal char- 
acter of scientific abstraction and the scientific construction, 
it would appear rather from his attitude than his actual argu- 
ment that he recognises a subjective synthesis in no such 
sense as it was used by Comte. Mr. Lewes devotes the last 
chapter of his book to "the place of sentiment in philosophy," 
and by admitting it to a place at all, by all that he says of the 
Logic of Feeling, he has taken a step of great significance. 
But by both of these terms Mr. Lewes appears to mean 
something quite different from what they mean in the language 
of Comte. By " logic of feeling " Comte meant the ordered 
correspondence between emotion and thought ; by the place 
of sentiment in philosophy, he meant that our conceptions 
can only be held together and systematised by means of 
a harmony ultimately satisfying the deepest emotion. 

It is in this that will be found the real divergence of Mr. 
Lewes from Comte, and not in the various arguments 
pointed out in his book. If our entire scheme of thought is 
only, as Mr. Lewes has shown, a gradual approach towards 
an ideal transcript of the external order, and if over the in- 
formation of that ideal transcript the emotions exercise, as 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND 1 15 

Mr. Lewes shows, so powerful an influence, and if these 
emotions are so preponderant and continuous in our lives 
as they undoubtedly are, it would seem that a subjective 
synthesis of thought is the only one that can be stable or 
efficient; that is, our ideal construction in thought must 
correspond not only with the data of experience without, but 
with the sum total and consensus of the human organism 
within. That human organism consists essentially of three 
great elements — feeling, activity, intelligence. Its unity 
and its efficiency depend on the degree with w T hich all three 
co-operate and strengthen each other. They co-operate 
under certain definite conditions partly arising from their 
own relations to each other within, partly from the material 
environment to which they are subject, and partly from the 
social organism in which and with which they must act. 
And the relation in which they work truly is that summed up 
by Comte in the aphorism — 

Agir par affection, et penser pour agir. 

It follows, then, that feeling in its highest and deepest 
sense must form the stimulus and sanction of the complete 
human consensus. That highest feeling has, as its object, 
an end strictly social. And thus a social destination and a 
social co-ordination are essential for the stability and efficiency 
of human conceptions. That is to say, the only real phi- 
losophy is that which is organised around a social creed as its 
basis and centre. Such we conceive to be the subjective 
synthesis of Comte; and though Mr. Lewes appears through- 
out his work to touch at points upon this view, it does not 
appear to us that as yet he makes it a part of his own system. 

But the very fad that he calls his book "the foundations 
of a creed," and the spirit in which he has approached this 
and kindred problems, make his plan in this, and the promised 



Il6 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

volumes, one of singular interest to all those who, from any 
point of view, await the amalgamation of Philosophy with 
Religion. One fact of no little significance may be pointed 
out, the difference that Mr. Lewes draws in the outset be- 
tween his view of a creed and that of Mr. Spencer. Mr. 
Lewes puts the Unknowable entirely aside, and declines to 
find any refuge from difficulties or any religious basis, by 
invoking either the unknown or the unknowable. To leave 
this open, we have always felt, is to reopen the whole range 
of Metaphysics in its worst or metempirical sense, and the 
whole apparatus of Theology will follow through the breach. 
Surrounded as we are by the unknown and the unknowable, 
they can do us no harm and waste no time, except by our al- 
lowing them to entangle our lives by our own idle curiosity. 
They will die out of the consciousness of mankind, like witch- 
craft and astrology, not by being disproved or reproved, not 
by being either explained or explained away, but by the in- 
telligence and energies of men being directed to more fruitful 
and more ennobling ends. The real answer to Metaphysics, 
if we may trust the title-page of Mr. Lewes' book, the real 
solution of these problems of Life and Mind, is to be found 
in the foundations of a Creed. And we will close a volume 
which has satisfied many of our expectations, and awakens 
many more, with the words with which it opens — " Deeply 
as we may feel the mystery of this universe and the limitations 
of our faculties, the Foundations of a Creed can only rest upon 
the known and the knowable." 

P.S. 1907. — The attempt of Lewes to coin the new word 
Metempirics and to substitute it for Metaphysics has en- 
tirely fallen flat. His attempt to revive Metaphysics under a 
scientific aspect has deservedly failed, and led to the absurd 
mistake of assuming that he had himself reverted to Meta- 



PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND 117 

physics. But the generation that followed devoted its re- 
searches, by experimental and physical methods, to solve the 
problems of Matter, Motion, Force, and Origin. Lewes' in- 
stinct as a physicist led him to see that these elemental prob- 
lems were destined to pass away from the Metaphysical 
Ontologist into the hands of the Chemist, the Electrician, 
the Physicist, and the Biologist. 



VII 
THE SOCIAL FACTOR IN PSYCHOLOGY 

In a very recent work we read as follows: — "Who that 
had ever looked upon the pulpy mass of brain-substance, 
and the nervous cords connecting it with the organs, could 
resist the shock of incredulity on hearing that all he knew of 
passion, intellect, and will was nothing more than molecular 
change in this pulpy mass ? Who that had ever seen a nerve- 
cell, could be patient on being told that Thought was a 
property of such cells, as Gravitation was a property of 
Matter?" 

This remark does not sound like anything original. We 
have often heard, and we continually read protests to the 
like effect. I quote it, however, solely for the connection 
in which it occurs, and for the author from whom it comes. 
The passage is not from the writings of either a theologian 
or a spiritualist, of a metaphysician of the intuitional or 
idealist school. It is from the last work of George Lewes, 
The Study of Psychology, 1879, an d it is in complete accord 
with all that he has written on these questions. 

It is certain that he regards Psychology as the study of 
material organisms, not as the study of an immaterial sub- 
stance. He says: — "In this work, the science will be 
regarded as a branch of Biology, and its Method as that which 
is pursued in the physical sciences." He calls Psychology 
"the science of the facts of Sentience." And, still, he uses 
(and most consistently uses) an argument which is frequently 

118 



SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY H9 

thought to prove that the knowledge of the human Soul is 
not in pari materia with our knowledge of organic life, and 
that it must be based on some other foundation. 

What he means is, that our study of individual organic 
life, though giving us the basis and ground-plan of our study 
of Psychology, cannot give us all we want; we need, as a 
complement, the study of social life. In other words, the 
knowledge of Mind and Feeling cannot be complete without 
the study of Society, without History in its widest sense. 
True psychology is, therefore, a very mixed kind of inquiry. 
It cannot be reduced to the study of detached organs in 
individual bodies. It embraces elements partly biologic 
and partly sociologic ; and Psychology cannot be limited to 
Biology, properly speaking, unless we give to Biology the 
extravagant extension of meaning by which it would include 
History. 

This insistence on a social factor in Psychology is not new. 
It was first urged, as Mr. Lewes shows, by Auguste Comte. 
It has since, from a different point of view, been expounded 
by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and some others. Mr. Lewes has 
now given it a fresh emphasis. It seems to me to offer some 
hope of a solution, that may ultimately close the secular 
battle between Materialism and Spiritualism. 

Shortly stated, the importance of the Social Factor in 
Psychology is this : — Thought and Feeling are undoubtedly 
functions of the Organism ; they can only be treated rationally 
by starting from the same data and with the same methods 
that we use in treating other functions of organic life; and 
lastly, mental state and organic state are always correlative: 
we have no data for detaching them. So far, we arc using 
almost the language of the older Materialists. But we now 
know that the rational study of the Organism, Man, is not 
identical with the special study of the organs ; of all the organs, 



120 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

or of any particular organ. The true study of the human 
organism — it has long ago been seen by all intelligent biolo- 
gists — rests on the comparative study of animal organisation 
generally, i.e. on general biology ; and also upon the relations 
of animal and human organisation to the external environ- 
ment in which life is placed, and on which life depends. 

Thus, whilst still holding on to the central doctrine that 
mental and moral phenomena are functions of the organism, 
rational Psychology passed out of the crude platitude that 
"the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile," and 
it enlarged itself in several ways. First, whilst earnest in the 
analysis and special study of organs, it kept the Organism, as 
a whole, in view as the key of the position ; next, it was vigi- 
lant to observe the relations with the external environment, 
whether of organ or of organism ; then it worked out all the 
consequences of the truth that the human organism must be 
studied by the light of animal organisation generally. Finally, 
it enriched and corrected the direct study of organisation by 
the study of the development of organisation, by Embryology 
and Evolution. This was, in fact, to call in the aid of the 
History of Organisation, individual or general. 

All this was clearly within the province of Biology, strictly 
so called. The whole of the data and methods lay within 
the study of the living Organism. This, however, was not 
enough. Biology, pure and simple, could not, under these 
conditions, vindicate its claim to an exclusive hearing on 
Psychology. Theologians, metaphysicians, common sense, 
and the public instinct maintained a continual protest, in 
all kinds of ways, and with every variety of theory. Amidst 
wild assumptions and self-contradictory declamation, what 
they all said in the main came to this : — " A science which 
has not one word to say about the profoundest movements 
that have ever affected mankind (and, ex hypothesis Biology 



SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 121 

has nothing to say about the origin of Christianity, the 
Crusades, the Reformation, or the French Revolution) 
cannot have an exclusive right to instruct us on the mental 
and moral phenomena of human nature." 

This objection could not be met. Biology, indeed, in that 
crude form, suffered a rebuff. In vain it cried that an en- 
larged knowledge of molecular physics and organic processes, 
a more elaborate analysis of cerebral phenomena, would 
ultimately enable it to tabulate the conditions of the rise of 
Christianity. The world only laughed ; and Biology — 
which all the while was right, as far as it went — grievously 
injured Science and Philosophy, by claiming a field larger 
than it could defend or control. 

A most important point, in truth, had been overlooked. 
It was not enough to treat the Organism in relation to the 
external environment, and to study the human organisation by 
the light of animal organisation generally, — to compare Man 
with animals, to trace the development of the human organ- 
ism, and of the human species. All this Biology had done, and 
had well done; but this was not enough. It was not suffi- 
ciently remembered that Man was not only an animal, but 
an animal of a unique kind, and that he had functions and 
faculties that, for the purpose in hand, were, practically 
speaking, not found in other animals. Man, in fact, had 
powers of mental and moral development, so special to Man, 
and of such immense importance to his nature, that Man was, 
literally speaking, not Man at all, unless regarded in connec- 
tion with his whole social environment. Just as it was idle 
to study animal organisation apart from the inorganic con- 
ditions of organisation, or to study human organisation apart 
from the biological conditions of animal organisation — and 
these trui lis had been long felt by all rational biologists 
so at last it came to be seen thai it was equally idle to study 



122 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

the human organism apart from the social organism. The 
mental and moral functions of the individual exist so com- 
pletely in society, and are so enormously affected by society, 
that the study of the facts of society, and of the history of 
society, is the only field where the full bearing of mental and 
moral functions can be traced. 

The continuous and traditional life of the human race, its 
power of growth and mental and moral development, con- 
stitute, in fact, the characteristic quality of the human or- 
ganism. The human organism would not be what we call 
"Man," if there had never been on the earth any such phe- 
nomenon as human society. Man would at most be an an- 
thropoid brute. Consequently, they were wrong who thought 
they could (psychologically) study the human organism, as 
an organism, apart from the human society in which and by 
which its psychological functions operate. To do this was 
precisely the same error as it would be to study the phenomena 
of organic movement by inspecting tissues no longer capable 
of vital action, to study the functions of organs by inspecting 
the organs without observing them in functional relation to 
the external world, to construct a theory of respiration with- 
out any reference to the chemical constituents of the atmos- 
phere, or to expound the function of hearing by analysing the 
auditory organ, apart from the phenomena of external sound. 

A rational Psychology, therefore, has to supplement its 
study of animal organisation, and of the human organism, 
and of the relations of this organism to the inorganic world, 
by a study of the social organism, and of the relations of the 
human organism to the social world in which alone, mentally 
and morally speaking, it lives and operates. That is to say, 
no study of the organism, simply as such, can found a complete 
Psychology. It must rest on the double study, first, of the 
organism as such, then, of the organism as a unit of the social 



SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 1 23 

organism. But this is equivalent to saying that Biology, 
in the natural meaning of that term, cannot embrace the 
whole of the elements of Psychology. For it would be a vio- 
lent abuse of language to call Biology the science of the facts 
of the social organism. This is the province of Sociology, — 
for linguistic purists will have to admit that indispensable 
hybrid, and not the only hybrid, in scientific nomenclature. 
The result of this is that a rational Psychology can only be 
completed by the aid of sociologic reasoning and data. 

It is hardly necessary to add that, in extending the field 
of study of the mental and moral phenomena to the study 
of human society, there is no break with the scientific data 
and methods which form the biologic study of the simple 
organism. Sociology is just as much a science as Biology, 
and is equally rigid in its canons of verification, and equally 
abhorrent of assuming hypotheses for evidence. There is 
nothing new in this demand for a social element in the study 
of Mind and Feeling, nor is it in the least idealist or spiritual- 
ist. Comte, Spencer, Lewes, and many others have worked 
it out in different ways, and on various lines. Perhaps 
Lewes, in his last work, has given special emphasis to it, 
and his definition of Psychology appears to be the most 
complete we have. 1 

We often remark the deep and burning feelings which these 
problems of the mental and moral nature of men call out. 
We all know the storms of moral and intellectual indigna- 
tion which agitate some of the best and wisest of men, when 
they are told that every part of human Thought and feeling 
must be treated, by strict scientific law, as a state of the 
organism, and must be interpreted by the laws of the organic 

1 " Psychology is the analysis and classification of the sentient functions 
and faculties, revealed to observation and induction, completed by the re- 
duction of them to their conditions of existence, biologil al and BOl iological." 



124 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

functions. "What!" they cry, "is the enthusiasm of St. 
Paul and the meditation of Descartes to be made clearer by 
the study of animal organisation?" 

And their indignation and their heat were most just, so 
long as the laws of the human organism were offered them on 
the narrow basis of simple Biology. But a larger basis is 
now unfolded. Men who could not be dragged one step 
from the field of scientific law, who held that every mental 
and moral fact was in necessary relation with a physiological 
fact, still went on to insist that the laws of the human or- 
ganism are bound up with, and can only be read by, the laws 
of the social organism. But this new factor let in at once the 
direct study of the whole range of human emotion, intelli- 
gence, and will, of all the movements, moral, affective, reli- 
gious, imaginative, that have ever ennobled mankind; of 
all history, of the whole range of tradition, poetry, art, hero- 
ism, and devotion. In a word, we say that the knowledge 
of Man's mental and moral nature, Psychology, if it have its 
continuous roots in the analysis of nerves and brain-matter, 
and its body in the science of organic function, has its top in 
the record of all that is lofty in Man's spiritual nature. 

We may draw solid comfort from this teaching. Our view 
of such a subject as Psychology will depend, of course, for 
each of us, upon the set of his whole mental current, on his 
knowledge, and partly on his temperament and life. A man 
will not accept the theory of organic functions in lieu of his 
life-long spiritualism, simply because the theory of organic 
functions may have ceased to disgust him, to rank him with the 
brutes that perish, to force him to abandon all the profound 
spiritual connotations of the science of the Heart and of the 
Mind. Yet withal, when we see how profoundly these ques- 
tions of Spirit and Matter in thought and feeling run into the 
summits of religion, and in places less illuminated with the 



SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 125 

dry light that ever burns amidst philosophers, how often they 
are decided under the influence of disgust or enthusiasm, 
may we not hope to behold more agreement and mutual ap- 
proach, if we can eliminate this element of disgust and terror? 
And why should the most devotional and spiritual nature, the 
most ideal and the most sympathetic of men, feel anything 
of terror or disgust toward a theory of human nature which 
takes for its data every spiritual and emotional fact in human 
story along with all the other facts human, animal, or cosmi- 
cal? Those who rest Psychology on strict methods of ex- 
perience do not affirm that the grey-matter of the brain thinks 
and feels ; we say that the organism thinks and feels, and in 
order to understand the laws of its thinking and feeling, we say 
that you must study (along with much else) all that is beauti- 
ful and heroic in the record of Humanity. You may not 
adopt our theory of the organism ; but does it disgust you or 
terrify you? You may not accept our interpretation of the 
facts; but every one of the facts of mental and moral life 
are as much the data of our interpretation as of yours. 

And thus it comes about, as we who view these things from 
the religious point of view unceasingly declare, that the 
paramount and ever-present conception of Humanity ex- 
plains, while it co-ordinates, all science; and that as Man 
lives only in Humanity, so by Humanity alone can Man 
understand himself, and the divisions of men be hereafter 
reconciled in one Feeling and in one Faith. 



vni 

THE ABSOLUTE 

At a Symposium of the Metaphysical Society a distinguished 
disciple o) Hegel read a paper on "The Absolute" as 
conceived by that school. It affirmed that the Ultimate 
Cause, which must be causa sui and causa causans, is the 
ABSOLUTE, or the Unconditioned, or the Infinite 
Substance, in HegeVs language — u the identity of identity 
and non-identity" The Absolute, it continued, cannot 
be subject to the conditions of space and time, or it would 
not be the Unconditioned: it is Infinite and Eternal. 
The terms eternal, self-existing, necessary, are positive 
definitions of the Absolute, and contain no negative element. 
The Absolute affirms itself and everything else that is. 
To that paper I read the following reply. 

Since the learned Reader of this paper admits that every- 
thing we observe is assumed by us to be the effect of some 
cause, we cannot think of a cause which is not itself an effect, 
having its own cause beyond it, and so on infinitely. His 
paper declares that we cannot think of an infinite chain of 
causes and effects. That may be ; but we are just as unable 
to think of a cause which is not an effect, and has itself no 
cause. An infinite chain of causes, and a cause itself un- 
caused are equally unthinkable by Man. 

The Absolute cannot be a cause at all. A cause is neces- 
sarily related to its effect, otherwise it would not be a cause. 
By cause we mean that which is inevitably followed by its 

126 






THE ABSOLUTE 127 

effect. But that which is inevitably followed by something 
else, is related to that something. Therefore it is conditioned, 
being under the condition of preceding its effect. Conse- 
quently a Cause cannot be Absolute, for it is necessarily 
conditioned, and Absolute means that which is neither con- 
ditioned nor related. 

The Cause is not, and cannot be, the Effect. If the Cause 
were the Effect, it would be distinguishable under two modes 
of existence. But the Absolute, because it is absolute, can- 
not have a dual existence, but can only exist in one absolute 
mode. 

Since the Cause is not the Effect, the Effect must have 
something which the Cause has not. The Effect must be 
something more than the Cause, and yet something which 
necessarily follows or accompanies the Cause and is involved 
in the very conception of Cause. Therefore the Absolute 
cannot be a cause, nor The Cause, nor the First Cause ; for 
if it were a cause, it would necessarily presuppose something 
else as necessary as itself, which was not itself. 

If you contend that the Absolute is not necessarily the 
Cause, but becomes a Cause, then by becoming a Cause, it 
ceases to be absolute, for the Absolute would be capable of 
change and of passing into a new mode of existence. 

If the Absolute becomes a Cause, it must, by that change 
from Absolute existence into Causal existence, become either 
more or less. But the Absolute is held to be Perfect in itself, 
Eternal, Infinite. Is the Absolute more the Absolute when it 
becomes a Cause, or less the Absolute? In either case it 
ceases to be the Absolute, for degree, or change, cannot be 
predicated of the Absolute. Degree, change, more or less, 
imply conditions of existence. 

If The Absolute was Infinite, apart from its becoming 
a Cause, it could not be more infinite when it became a cause. 



128 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

And yet if something is added in becoming a Cause, the In- 
finite would be capable of extension. If nothing is added, 
The Absolute, apart from Cause, is absolutely identical with 
the Absolute become a Cause — i.e. the Cause equals o. 

When the Absolute has become the Cause, it has become 
relative, for Cause is necessarily related to Effect. But is the 
Absolute capable of becoming the Relative ? If it is, it is not 
the Absolute, for it can become that which is not absolute. 
If it be not so capable, then there is something which limits 
the Absolute. And if it be limited, then it is not infinite. 

For the same reason, if the Absolute be not capable of 
becoming the Relative, it cannot be the Unconditioned, be- 
cause it is under the condition of never becoming the Rela- 
tive. 

Absolute in truth means that which is not relative, as Rel- 
ative means that which is not absolute, because it is conceived 
as having connection with something else. Hence, relative 
is a positive, not a negative conception. Absolute is a wholly 
negative conception, for it merely asserts the absence of re- 
lation. 

Those metaphysicians and logicians are right who, with 
Sir W. Hamilton and Mansel, maintained that absolute is 
a negative conception. And the attempt to give a positive 
meaning to absolute is the source of endless confusion. 

The learned Reader has cited the unfortunate argument 
of Herbert Spencer in his First Principles to show some pos- 
itive existence in the Absolute. "To say that we cannot 
know the Absolute is, by implication, to affirm that there is 
an Absolute." It is strange that this eminent philosopher 
should countenance so shallow a mystification. Why 
positive? What existence? Why the Absolute? Examine 
this dictum. 

He argues — "When we say we cannot know the Absolute, 



THE ABSOLUTE 129 

we affirm that there is an Absolute." By parity of reasoning, 
when we say we cannot know Non- Existence, we affirm that 
there is Xon- Existence. This may be Hegelism, but it is 
a contradiction in words. When we say we cannot know the 
Sea-serpent, do we affirm that the Sea-serpent exists? When 
we say we cannot know Abracadabra, do we affirm that 
Abracadabra exists ? 

What is the meaning of The Absolute? Absolute is an 
adjective simply denoting absence of relations, just as empty 
denotes absence of contents. Why The Absolute any more 
than The Empty? The Equal? The Red? The Un- 
meaning? 

Metaphysicians have debated about the relative and the 
absolute, using capital letters and putting the definite article 
before adjectives till they have come to persuade themselves 
that words of mere description denote actual Things. And 
then they affirm that, having turned an adjective into a sub- 
stantive by using the capital letter and the definite article, 
they have proved the existence of the adjective. 

The Relative is an unmeaning phrase just as The Absolute 
is; and rational Philosophy has suffered from the unhappy 
error of Herbert Spencer in recognising any such verbal 
windbag. It has led to the deification of the Unknowable as 
a sort of First Cause and Author of the Universe. The 
Relative is just as unknowable as The Absolute, or The Red, 
or The Equal, or The Unmeaning. It would be as wise to 
fall prostrate in admiration of The Unmeaning as to con- 
centrate religion on the absolute Unknowable. 

We are told that we cannot conceive the relative unless at 
the same time we conceive the absolute. We might just as 
well argue that we cannot conceive a man as having a mother, 
unless we also conceive him as having no mother at all. 
We can and do conceive every man as under an endless series 

K 



130 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of different relations — and we take these as positive facts. 
But, unless for purposes of logic or abstract science, we 
never conceive any man as entirely bare of any relations of 
any kind. 

Ten thousand intelligent men and women, hour by hour, 
conceive beings and things around them in all conceivable 
relations, and they cannot think of them at all except in 
some one or other of these relations. They do not, and 
cannot, think of them in an absolute way. Logicians, gram- 
marians, and philosophers, after long mental training, do their 
best to fix their attention on some thing or being, after elimi- 
nating the relations in which the thing or being is inevitably 
surrounded. But this mental feat is not an innate necessity 
of the human mind. The ten thousand men and women of 
the world are right, even philosophically, and the one phi- 
losopher meditating on absolute existence is merely perform- 
ing a dialectical hypothesis. 

When the philosopher erects into a law of thought the 
dialectical hypothesis, of which only one mind in a million 
is capable, and out of this logical artifice constructs a Self- 
Existing Entity, he is misled by his own meditations, and is 
falsifying human nature. 

I interrogate my own consciousness : and I cannot find 
any conception of The Relative, or The Absolute, or of The 
Unknowable. I can discover no trace whatever in my own 
consciousness of a positive Something behind the Relative, 
or of any transcendental Unknowable behind phenomena. 
I find thousands of things unknown, and I have every 
reason to think most of them will remain unknown. But 
what The Unknown, or the Unknowable, may be I know not ; 
and I believe them both to be unmeaning phrases — as one 
might say The Red, or The Indefinite, or The Ignorant — 
if they are meant to denote Entities, or even abstract Ideas. 



THE ABSOLUTE 131 

Nor do I find in my own consciousness any sense of being 
confronted with a Real behind all phenomena as a positive 
Entity. I find a consciousness that there may be a Real; 
and I cannot even exclude the very unlikely possibility that 
the phenomena may be the Real after all, or that Phenomena 
and Real may both be phases of my own consciousness. 
No one of these three possible solutions can be either proved 
— or disproved. And nothing rational would turn on any 
one — if proved or disproved. In any case, the Real, the 
Absolute, the Unknowable do not force themselves upon my 
consciousness as objective Existences, or even as intelligible 
problems of thought. 

I well know the answer to all this — an answer to which 
Herbert Spencer inconsistently gave some countenance. 
They say — "All this is simply the common sense view of the 
'man in the street.' This is the mere practical reason of the 
ordinary Philistine." "No doubt in Logic, that is intel- 
lectually and in definite reasoning," they add, "there can be 
no consciousness of The Absolute, but there is an indefinite, 
undefinable, subliminal consciousness, which is wholly in- 
dependent of Logic, or strict reasoning; scintillations of 
thought, quite superior to any reasoning; there is a 'sort of 
a something' which makes us conscious 'in a kind of way' 
of a transcendental Absolute, Real, Unknowable. This 
universal consciousness is not amenable to Time or Space 
or Reason or Logic. It works in its own non-terrestrial, 
empyrean way, and mocks at Time, Space, Reason, and 
Logic." 

So far the Metaphysicians ever since Hegel. And after 
examining all they say, I affirm that the man-in-thc-street, 
the Philistine, has the substance, and the metaphysician 
grasps at the shadow — the shadow of his own brain cast 
on the clouds of Non-Entity. If philosophy means that, 



132 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

after the strictest processes of logical reasoning, this tran- 
scendentalism is to sweep away all rational conclusions and 
reveal alogical dogmas of its own, philosophy would descend 
to the level of vulgar faith-healing or the credulity of a Nea- 
politan peasant who believes in St. Januarius. 

All talk about a " universal consciousness," about "a 
primordial synthesis of consciousness-in-general, having 
three elements, of which particular consciousness is only one," 
about " consciousness-in-general being identical and also 
non-identical with Reality in the Universe" — this is mere 
verbiage. And the man of "ordinary common sense" 
is not only justified in practically turning from it as waste 
of mental activity, but he is philosophically right in telling 
the metaphysician that he is juggling with words — and is 
not using his brain like a sane man. 

The learned Hegelian of the paper writes : "The Absolute 
affirms itself, and at the same time everything else that is." 
I proceed to examine this proposition. 

If the Absolute affirms the existence of something which is 
not itself, it cannot be infinite, for it would be limited by 
things which are not itself. 

If the Absolute is "everything else," what is the thing 
which it affirms but which is "not itself"? 

If the Absolute is "the infinite substance," how can it 
affirm "everything else that is"? Infinite substance must 
contain everything that is, or it would not be infinite. But 
if it contains everything else it would not be absolute, for it 
would contain an infinite variety of things. 

The learned reader adopts Spinoza's dictum "that the 
Infinite Substance is a res cogitans" and also Hegel's dictum 
"that the Absolute must be conceived as a Subject, because 
the Absolute thinks the universal ideas which form the ulti- 
mate bond of coherence of the Universe." Whether he 



THE ABSOLUTE 1 33 

rightly interprets Hegel in attributing Personality to The 
Absolute is doubtful; but he does so attribute Personality 
himself. 

I proceed to examine these views. The "coherence of 
the Universe" implies a bond between diverse materials, 
and the Absolute thinks the thoughts which are the bond that 
causes these materials to cohere. But if so, The Absolute 
must cause, i.e. create, the materials, and also be itself the 
"bond." That is to say, The Absolute is at once the sub- 
stance and the form of everything that is. In that case, 
The Absolute would be cognisable under two distinct aspects, 
that of substance and of form. But these aspects are con- 
trasted and, if so, related necessarily to each other. Con- 
sequently, The Absolute would have a dual existence and 
not an absolute existence. 

Again, The Absolute would be both res cogitans and also 
res cogitata. Thought, humanly speaking, implies both 
Subject and Object — an Ego and a Non-Ego. Can The 
Absolute have any Non-Ego ? Can it think without a Non- 
Ego? If it can, it must be "everything" itself, and then it 
cannot be the cause of everything else. 

If The Absolute is conscious of a Non-Ego, it is conscious 
of something which is not itself, and which limits it, and then 
it cannot be infinite. If The Absolute is not conscious of a 
Non-Ego, it is conscious of being the Universal Subject, 
without an Object. That means that it is conscious of being 
everything, and its thoughts must correspond with truth. 
But the paper admits that "to know is to distinguish." If 
The Absolute is "everything," everything is absolute. And 
thought is impossible, where nothing remains to distinguish. 

Again, if The Absolute is a Subject, it has a consciousness 

of Personality, for, "humanly speaking," we cannot conceive 

that which thinks thoughts able to ad as bonds, as being 



134 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

devoid of Personality. But we cannot conceive Personality, 
unless we conceive it as conscious of something not itself, 
with which it is contrasted or related. That is to say, the 
idea of Personality excludes the idea of The Absolute. And 
that seems finally to have been the conclusion of Hegel. 

Metaphysicians seek to escape from these dilemmas — 
which they call "mere common sense" — by distinguishing 
between actual and potential existence — or the "actualised 
consciousness" and "the potential consciousness-in-general." 
They say The Absolute is not necessarily a Cause, does not 
necessarily think, is not necessarily a Subject, not a Person. 
But it has the potentiality of becoming all these. Qud 
absolute, it is absolute. All consciousness, we are told, in- 
cludes actual concrete consciousness and potential conscious- 
ness-in-general. 

But when The Absolute does anything, becomes anything, 
acts as "the bond of coherence," or "thinks," or "causes" 
anything, or becomes at once Universal Subject and Uni- 
versal Object, the idea of change is involved, and a new mode 
of existence. That is to say, it ceases to be absolute and 
becomes The Relative. 

But The Absolute is already Perfect and Infinite, apart 
from ceasing, thinking, or becoming. And, in passing from 
actual to potential consciousness, it would derogate from its 
nature of Absolute. The "potential" side of the Absolute 
would only be a mode of eliminating the idea with which we 
set out. 

If The Absolute were the greater, or the better, or more 
the infinite, or more absolute, or in any respect more devel- 
oped when it assumes its "potential" powers than when the 
potentiality lay dormant — then the Absolute would not be 
Perfect when they were dormant. If it were less great, less 
absolute, in any respect different when it passes into energy, 



THE ABSOLUTE 1 35 

The Absolute would be relative. If actual and potential 
existence involve no difference, then the dilemma remains 
unsolved. 

A learned Prelate suggests that The Absolute must not be 
taken with too strict logical precision. It may be a First 
Cause, in the sense that it was not what we commonly mean 
by a Cause, but a transcendental, super-logical Cause. It 
has no necessary relations : but it may be capable of develop- 
ing some quasi-relations. Surely all this comes to saying, 
in the familiar spirit of Anglican compromise, that The 
Absolute is not quite absolute, that it is a modified Absolute, 
adapted to our human understanding. 

Now, if there be any one thing which is bound to be abso- 
lutely the thing it claims to be — it is The Absolute. The 
Absolute by its nature excludes any degree, compromise, 
approximation, or qualification. Conceive an Absolute 
secundum quid ! — an Absolute which is absolute " in a sense " 
— which has the nature of the absolute ! This may be 
theology, but it is not Philosophy. An Absolute which 
" affirms itself and everything else that is" cannot cry for 
mercy on the ground that it is not a real Absolute, but a 
modified Absolute, "a sort of an" Absolute: — not a real 
lion, but only a metaphysical hide. 

And the only answer to all this is: "Your objections may 
be sound Logic, 'humanly speaking' ; but we are not arguing 
logically, but only metaphysically. The Absolute has no 
relation to Time, and nothing can be predicated of it in the 
human terms of Time, or Space, or Change. It is supersen 
suous, super-logical, and perceptible only in the unity of the 
synthesis of identity with non identit \ . " 

The common sense of sensible nun is after all the true 
Philosophy in the matter. We can neither know nor con- 
jecture anything rational about The Absolute, or the Un- 



136 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

conditioned, or Consciousness-in-general. The ideas they 
denote, the very phrases, are unmeaning, cobwebs spun in- 
dustriously out of infinite subtleties and nonentities — which 
rest upon nothing, and can lead to nothing. 



IX 

THE BASIS OF MORALS 

A Symposium at the Metaphysical Society 

Though I do not presume to interpose in the principal 
combat waged by the learned Professor W. K. Clifford and 
P. C. W., I take the opportunity afforded me of saying a few 
words upon the paper of the latter, which propounds, I 
think, a new and dangerous claim. The argument of P. C. 
W., and it is his central position in the discussion, amounts 
to this : there can be no morality but one which is based on 
the design of the Creator of man. He insists that no one has 
any right to use the words "good" or "bad" of man, "unless 
we suppose him to have had a maker and to be made with 
a design." But this is to push the theory of final causes 
further than it has yet been carried, and to make morality 
the simple servant of theology. 

Merely to suppose that the man has a maker, and was made 
with a design, would be to very little purpose, unless we knew 
what the design was, and how the design is to be carried out 
by the thing or being made. A savage, for instance (and 
moral problems must open, as do games of chess with a 
pawn, by advancing the convenient savage), — the savage 
finds a watch. How decide if it be a good watch? If 
the savage is a disciple of Dr. YV. Paley, he will rightly 
argue that the watch had a maker, and this maker a 
design. Bui before he can say if it be a "good" or a 
"bad" watch, he must be instructed in its purpose and 

*37 



138 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

uses, or he will know no more about it than if he took it to 
be a curious stone. 

In the same way, to apply P. C. W.'s argument, before 
we can pronounce the man to be "good" or "bad," we must 
know not only that the man had a creator, and the creator a 
design, but we must know precisely what the design is, and 
some one in the maker's confidence must instruct us how 
his work is to be used. Otherwise, simply to suppose that 
the maker of man had a design, is only to say that every man 
can form any opinion he pleases. 

What precisely is the design on which man was created, 
and how he may rightly work out that design, is the very 
question about which all theologies and all religions, and cer- 
tainly, not the least, all Christian theologians most vehe- 
mently contend. Thus, to tell us that there can be no mo- 
rality but one based on the design of creation, is to adjourn 
any chance of agreement in morality, and even the com- 
mencement of moral truth, until Theology has settled all its 
controversies, and Revelation has disposed of every criticism. 
Our sense of right and wrong, conduct and precept, would 
become corollaries of Divinity; they must wait the issue at 
stake between Professor Lightfoot and the author of Super- 
natural Religion. 

If the Bible be an authentic and genuine revelation, we 
have indeed that precise and direct account of the design with 
which Man was made. But until this distinct revelation of 
the Creator's design is established beyond dispute, and for 
all who do not accept it literally and completely, every man 
will conceive the design according to his temper and habits. 
To the cannibal, the final cause of Man will be to eat his 
neighbour joyfully, until he be himself eaten peacefully. 
The red-skin will insist that Man was created to take and 
furnish scalps, the Dahomian to celebrate and support 



THE BASIS OF MORALS 1 39 

"grand customs," and the Nubian to fill slave-markets. 
As of old, it will be always, quot homines, tot Dei; and the 
designs of these creators will be differently conceived by each 
tribe. A late ex-Chancellor was once heard to say, after a 
visit to the Zoological Gardens, that so great a multiplicity 
of created beings forcibly impressed him with the conviction 
of a similar multiplicity of creators. So, if we put aside 
a full and direct Revelation of the design, the past and present 
races of the world have given so many different answers to 
the question — what is the purpose of Man? that it is plain 
mankind have attributed to the supposed creator an infinite 
diversity of designs, if they have not conceived an infinite 
variety of designers. 

What is called Natural Theology, and even that which 
may be called the substratum of all theologies, are really 
of no use for the purpose of deciding if a man or an action be 
"good" or "bad." Vague assumptions that there is a 
Creator, that his purpose was benevolent, that Man has rela- 
tions to things, beings, or a being outside of himself — all 
these fall short of what is required. They will not enable us 
to build up any morality, much less to solve such questions 
of casuistry as the State support of incurable paupers — the 
problem we started out to solve. A basis oj morals must 
determine the entire current of moral teaching; and it must 
be, like the axioms of geometry, universal, precise, and in- 
disputable. If all morality is to depend on the question, 
— how far does it conform to the design with which Man was 
created? — we must have that design ever before us, defined 
in all its breadth and its precision. This we can only gel from 
a specific revelation. Natural Theology and the light of 
Nature give the most opposite conclusions. If we do not 
mean, by the argument from the design of the Creator, the 
precise rules of life laid down in the Bible or by the Church, 



140 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

we really mean that every man is to call that "good" which 
is right in his own eyes ; and accordingly the moral scheme of 
P. C. W. would not differ from that of any heathen moralist, 
for the "design," and the "Creator," would be used by each 
reasoner as a dialectic hypothesis, to be modified at will. 

It is surely a dangerous ground to take up, thus to insist 
that there can be no "basis of morals" apart from theology, 
for this means, as we have seen, apart from some specific 
presentation by revelation; and if there can be no basis of 
morals, there can be no coherent morality, and if so, no 
settled sense of right and wrong, virtue and conduct, except 
such as comes haphazard, or by momentary impulse. Of 
all the systems affecting the practical problems of life, the 
moral code is perhaps the one on which there is the greatest 
agreement, and theology the one on which there is the least. 
And to insist that we cannot decide if any action be "good" 
or "bad," until we have a knowledge of the designs of the 
Creator — nay, that we may not use the very terms "good" 
and "bad," is to reverse the order in which Man has pro- 
ceeded, and to expose human conduct to prolonged uncer- 
tainty. It has always been seen that morality preceded 
theology, and was earlier fixed and accepted; the design of 
Providence was a deduction, in fact, from what men thought 
right, and God was an impersonation of their ideas of "good." 
It will be a perilous change to tell men that they must call 
nothing "good" or "bad," until the contending Churches 
have finally settled on some one way, in which "to justify 
the ways of God to Man." When Churches tell the world that 
men may not apply moral epithets to human actions, save 
in language of some theological scheme, men are very likely 
to grow indifferent to moral judgment altogether, without 
advancing any nearer to the particular theological scheme. 

My purpose is simply to draw attention to the new, as I 



THE BASIS OF MORALS 141 

think, and alarming doctrine, that no man may use the terms 
"good" or "bad," except in so far as he claims a knowledge 
of the design of a Creator ; and I shall therefore abstain from 
comment on one or two matters in the same ingenious paper, 
in which I think metaphors may be found disguised in the 
uniform of arguments. But it is worthy of notice that the 
mode in which the condition A is stated virtually excludes the 
obvious answer. It is assumed "that there is nothing super- 
natural in either [? any] of us — i.e. nothing in which our 
nature essentially differs from that of any other known animal 
— our differences from other animals being purely anatomi- 
cal," etc., etc. Here the sentence introduced by i.e. is cer- 
tainly not the equivalent of the former. Those who decline 
to assert any knowledge of anything supernatural in Man are 
far from asserting that there is nothing in which our nature 
essentially differs from that of any other known animal. 
It is difficult to see how the one proposition can be assumed 
for the other ; nay, it is difficult to see any connection between 
the two propositions. All orders of reasoners, however much 
they disclaim belief in the supernatural, would agree in ac- 
knowledging many things in which men essentially differ 
from brutes, and many differences not at all anatomical. 

The differences which separate men from brutes are in- 
finite capacities of intellectual, moral, and practical life — 
powers of developing thought, religion, sentiment, art, and 
industry, which other animals have not. It may fairly be 
said that they who disclaim any supernatural superiority 
for man are they who best sec, and who set most store by, 
Man's natural superiority to the brutes, and who least think 
of the.se differences as anatomical rather than as social, moral, 
and spiritual. To tell those who disclaim any knowledge 
of the supernatural that they regard Man as a mere brute, 
is an ancient reproach, but a novel argument. It has been 



142 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

used by the controversialists of many religions, but it does not 
often appear now in philosophical discussion. To the devotee 
of Brahminism, they who deny his doctrines degrade Man 
to the level of the brute. And the Fuegian whom the mis- 
sionary implored not to kill and eat his decrepit mother 
replied that, unless he did so, he should sink to the level of 
the dogs. 

The truth is, that the attempt to limit the basis of morals 
to the design of creation is entirely needless. All the pur- 
poses it serves are easily fulfilled by a simpler condition. 
Very many schools of moralists will be ready to admit that 
the true basis of morals may be found in the end which most 
befits human nature. If we find Man, as a fact, best adapted 
to live in a certain way, we can take that as a test of how Man 
should live, without dogmatising about the design of creation. 
For the purpose of supplying a basis of morals, it comes to 
precisely the same thing, whether we say that human nature 
is adapted to a certain life, or that it was designed by a par- 
ticular maker to follow that life. The correspondence be- 
tween Man's capacities and a given moral life is just as com- 
plete in one case as in the other ; and to encumber this fact 
with controversies as to its origin, is to raise needless diffi- 
culties. One class of reasoners believe that natural develop- 
ment has slowly adapted Man to the particular life ; another 
insist that Man was created with this particular design ; and 
a third are content to believe that he is so adapted as a fact, 
and they decline to set up any specific doctrine of creation, 
or any formal theory of evolution. All three schools will 
perfectly agree that, as a fact, it is better for Man to live in the 
same way, and they have, in fact, the same basis of morals. 
Nothing, therefore, can be more entirely gratuitous, or more 
certainly dangerous, than to convert a plain question of Moral 
Philosophy into a subordinate doctrine of Theology. 



THE BASIS OF MORALS 1 43 

What, if we are to give labels, we may call the functional 
basis of morals, will really satisfy all conditions, and it prac- 
tically embraces almost all theories. Human nature, when 
investigated, proves to be of a certain kind, and capable of 
certain works. It has tried all kinds of lives, but the sort 
of life at which it is best to aim is that where its nature is 
most harmoniously developed, where there is the least waste 
of power by conflict, and the greatest sustained result. Ages, 
races, and individuals may differ, more or less, as to what life 
exactly fills these conditions, but all will agree (it is the basis, 
and almost all the result of ancient philosophy) that the object 
of Man ought to be to develop his nature most completely. 

That is to say, the basis of morals is to be found by deter- 
mining the junction of human nature. What in the fore- 
going discussion are called the Mechanical and the Perfection- 
ist bases of morals, are only modes of explaining how this 
function of human nature came into existence, a question 
with which I am in no way concerned. The function, i.e. 
the proper action of the human organism, is a thing to be 
determined by observation and reflection, and can be deter- 
mined, and has been determined, by very various methods 
of reasoning in very much the same way. There is little 
more to be said, since Aristotle showed, at the outset of phi- 
losophy, that the good of Man and the happiness of Man may 
be used interchangeably, and both follow from observing 
and determining the proper work of Man. 

The ultimate consequences of finding the grounds of duty 
by observing the capabilities of human nature are, accord- 
ingly, almost exactly the same as those of finding them in the 
supposed designs of a Creator. Both say: — This is right, 
because Man is adapted to this. The latter theory only adds 
the gratuitous and unprovable assertion that Man has been 
adapted to it by a Being who created him with that design* 



144 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

And whilst nothing is gained to morality by this further ex- 
planation, everything is risked, by the mind being constantly 
invited to leave the ground of rational observation for that 
of arbitrary hypothesis. He who bases duty on observed 
capacities of mankind has every advantage possessed by him 
who bases it on the design of creation. He will, moreover, 
be kept in the sphere of reality ; whilst the Duty of the other 
will be merely his own imaginations. The doctrine of 
function is intelligible science ; that of design is mere theos- 
ophy. The designs of the Creator being limited only by the 
powers of fancy of the theorist, the theorist has to endow him- 
self with a real power of omniscience, and to rehearse crea- 
tion itself in his imagination, every time that he attempts 
to solve a moral problem. It is a curious example of this, 
that in the case of the cancerous pauper discussed by 
P. C. W., it is impossible to solve the problem on the theory 
of design, without first deciding the somewhat formidable 
question, what is the design of cancer? 

As I should approach the problem itself on a moral basis 
almost identical with that of P. C. W., theological substratum 
apart, it is not singular if I come to almost identical conclu- 
sions. I should look with equal horror both upon desertion 
and assassination as modes of treating incurable paupers, 
and I should look on relief and charity as equally a sacred 
duty. I should do so because I find the rule, To Love one 
another, written in Man's nature ; because every man, by the 
laws of social existence, is the neighbour of every other man, 
and because the succour of the helpless is the plainest of 
social duties. Society would be convulsed unless mercy, 
tenderness, compassion, and self-sacrifice were impressed 
upon it daily and hourly by system, unless every violation 
of the duty to practise these virtues were visited by the public 
horror of brutality. 



THE BASIS OF MORALS I45 

Every virtue and every grace which private or public life 
has ever displayed under the teaching of any religion can be 
really shown to be the following out of Man's true nature; 
and, indeed, they have never had any other source or in- 
spiration. The plain dictates of duty, and the ground of 
obligation for morality, may equally be found in watching 
human nature in all its varieties and the vast history of its 
development ; and they stand on a footing far surer than our 
hesitating interpretation of what we call Revelation, or the 
vague hypotheses of Natural Theology. The Religion of 
Fictions may rest assured that a Religion of Science, in what- 
ever form presented, will be lacking neither in the graces, 
consolations, nor sanctions of a religion. In its own way, 
it will have its Revelation, its Future, its External Power, 
and its common Brotherhood ; and each of these will be all 
the more real and the more sustaining in that they will be 
natural, and not supernatural. 

And all this, to me, describes the moral characteristics, 
not of the Christian, but of the religious temper. With what 
has been so finely said in preceding discourses by Dr. Mar- 
tineau, we ought, I think, most cordially to join. Only for 
the words "Theology" and "Christian" we must put the 
wider and more ancient terms "Religion" and "Human"; 
and again, for the intrinsic consciousness and emotional in- 
tuitions, whereby these are said to prove themselves, we must 
substitute the reasonable proof of science, philosophy, and 
positive psychology. 

We have had before us three distinctive views as to the 
relations of Religion and Morality. Each of the three has 
pressed on us a very powerful thought. The reconciliation 
is obscure, vet I hold on to the hope that it may one day be 
found; that we shall have to .surrender neither Religion nor 
Science, neither demonstration on the one hand, nor Dogma, 



146 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Worship, and Discipline on the other; that we shall end by 
accepting a purely human base for our Morality, and withal 
come to see our Morality transfigured into a true Religion. 

It is the purport of the first of the arguments before us to 
establish : that morality has a basis of its own quite indepen- 
dent of all theology whatever, but that since morality must 
be deeply affected by any theology, the morality will be under- 
mined if based on a theology which is not true. We must 
all agree, I think, to that. 

The second argument insists that if the religious founda- 
tions and sanctions of morality be given up, human life runs 
the risk of sinking into depravity, since morality without 
religion is insufficient for general civilisation. For my part 
I entirely assent to that. 

The third argument rejoins that Theology cannot supply 
a base for morals that have lost their own ; but that morals, 
though they have their own base, and are second to nothing, 
are not adequate to direct human life until they be transfused 
into that sense of resignation, adoration, and communion 
with an overruling Providence, which is the true mark of 
Religion. I assent entirely to that. 

We, who follow the teaching of Comte, humbly look for- 
ward to an ultimate solution of all such difficulties by the 
force of one common principle : that we acknowledge a 
religion, of which the creed shall be science; of which the 
Faith, Hope, Charity, shall be real, not transcendental, 
earthly, not heavenly — a religion, in a word, which is en- 
tirely human, in its evidences, in its purposes, in its sanctions 
and appeals. Write the word "Religion" where we find 
the word "Theology," write the word "Human" where we 
find the word "Christian," or the words "Theist," "Mus- 
sulman," or "Buddhist," and these discussions grow prac- 
tical and easily reconciled ; the aspirations and sanctions of 



THE BASIS OF MORALS 1 47 

Religion burst open to us anew in greater intensity, without 
calling on us to surrender one claim of reality and humanity ; 
the realm of Faith and Adoration becomes again conterminous 
with Life, without disturbing, nay, whilst sanctifying, the 
invincible resolve of modern men to live in this world, jor 
this world, with their fellow-men. 

And this brings us to the source of all difficulties about the 
relations of Morality and Religion. We place our morality 

— we are compelled by the conditions of all our positive 
knowledge to place it — in a strictly human world. But 
it is the mark of every theology (the name of Theology as- 
sumes it) to place our religion in a non-human world. And 
thus our human system of morals may possibly be distorted 

— it cannot be supported — by a non-human religion. But, 
on the other hand, it is dwarfed and atrophied for want of 
being duly expanded into a truly human religion. Our 
morality with its human realities, our theology with its non- 
human hypotheses, will not amalgamate. Their methods 
are in conflict. In their base, in their logic, in their aim, they 
are heterogeneous. They do not lie in pari materiel. Give 
us a religion as truly human, as really scientific, as is our 
moral system, and all is harmony. 

Our morals, based as they must be on our knowledge of 
Life and of Society, are then ordered and inspired by a reli- 
gion which belongs, just as truly as our moral science does, 
to the world of science and of Man. And then religion will be 
no longer that quicksand of Possibility which two thousand 
years of debate have si ill lefl it to so many of us. It becomes 
at lasl the issue of our knowledge, the meaning of our science, 
the soul of our morality, the ideal of our imagination, the 
fulfilment of our aspirations, the lawgiver, in short, of our 
whole lives. Can il ever be this whilst we still pursue Re- 
ligion into the bubble world of the V.'Ihtm e and the Whither? 



148 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

That morality is dependent on theology; that morality 
is independent of religion : each of these views presents in- 
superable difficulties, and brings us to an alternative from 
which we recoil. To assert that there is no morality but 
what is based on Theology is to assert what experience, his- 
tory, and philosophy flatly contradict, nay that which revolts 
the conscience and all manly purpose within us. History 
teaches us that some of the best types of morality, in men and 
in races, have been found apart from anything that Christians 
can call theology at all. Morality has been advancing for 
centuries in modern Europe, whilst theology, at least in 
authority, has been visibly declining. 

The morality of Confucius and of Sakya Mouni, of Socrates 
and Marcus Aurelius, of Vauvenargues, Turgot, Condorcet, 
Hume, was entirely independent of any theology. The moral 
system of Aristotle was framed without any view to theology, 
as completely as that of Comte or of our recent moralists. 
We have experience of men with the loftiest ideal of life and 
of strict fidelity to their ideal, who expressly repudiate the- 
ology, and of many more whom theology never touched. 
Lastly, there is a spirit within us which will not believe that 
to know and to do the right, we must wait until the mysteries 
of existence and the universe are resolved, its origin, its gov- 
ernment, and its future. To make right conduct a corollary 
of a theological creed, is not only contrary to fact, but shock- 
ing to our self-respect. We know that the just spirit can find 
the right path, even whilst the judgment hangs bewildered 
amidst the Churches. 

To hold, as would seem to require of us the second argu- 
ment, that, though theology is necessary as a base for mo- 
rality, yet almost any theology will suffice — Polytheist, 
Mussulman, or Deist — so long as some imaginary being is 
postulated, this is indeed to reduce theology to a minimum; 



THE BASIS OF MORALS 149 

since, in this case, it does not seem to matter in which God 
you may believe. To say that morality is dependent on one 
particular theology, is to deny that men are moral outside 
your peculiar orthodoxy; to say that morality is dependent 
merely on some form of theology, is to say that it matters 
little to practical virtue' which of a hundred creeds you may 
profess. And when we shrink from the arrogance of the first 
and the looseness of the second position, we have no alterna- 
tive but to admit that our morality must have a human, and 
not a superhuman, base. 

It does not follow that morality can suffice for life without 
religion. Morality, if we mean by that the science of duty, 
after all can supply us only with a knowledge of what we 
should do. Of itself it can neither touch the imagination, 
nor satisfy the thirst of knowledge, nor order the emotions. 
It tells us of human duty, but nothing of the world without 
us ; it prescribes to us our duties, but it does not kindle the 
feelings which are the impulse to duty. Morality has nothing 
to tell us of a paramount Power outside of us, to struggle 
with which is confusion and annihilation, to work with which 
is happiness and strength ; it has nothing to teach us of a 
communion with a great Goodness, nor does it touch the 
chords of Veneration, Sympathy, and Love within us. 
Morality does not profess to organise our knowledge and give 
symmetry to life. It does not deal with Beauty, Affection, 
Adoration. 

If it order conduct, it does not correlate this conduct with 
the sum of our knowledge, or with the ideals of our imagina- 
tion, or with the deepest of our emotions. To do all this is 
the part of Religion, not of morality; and inasmuch as the 
sphere of this function is both wider and higher, so does 
Religion transcend Morality. Morality has to do with eon- 
duct, Religion with life. The firsl is the code of a part of 



150 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

human nature, the second gives its harmony to the whole 
of human nature. And morality can no more suffice for 
life than a just character would suffice for any one of us with- 
out intellect, imagination, or affection, and the power of 
fusing all these into the unity of a man. 

The lesson, I think, is twofold. On the one hand, morality 
is independent of theology, is superior to it, is growing whilst 
theology is declining, is steadfast whilst theology is shifting, 
unites men whilst theology separates them, and does its 
work when theology disappears. There is something like a 
civilised morality, a standard of morality, a convergence 
about morality. There is no civilised theology, no standard 
of theology, no convergence about it. On the other hand, 
morality will never suffice for life ; and every attempt to base 
our existence on morality alone, or to crown our existence 
with morality alone, must certainly fail. For this is to fling 
away the most powerful motives of human nature. To 
reach these is the privilege of Religion alone. And those 
who trust that the Future can ever be built upon science and 
civilisation, without religion, are attempting to build a 
Pyramid of bricks without straw. The solution, we believe, 
is a non-theological religion. 

There are some who amuse themselves by repeating that 
this is a contradiction in terms, that religion implies theology. 
Yet no one refuses the name of religion to the systems of 
Confucius and Buddha, though neither has a trace of theol- 
ogy. But disputes about a name are idle. If they could 
debar us from the name of Religion, no one could disinherit 
us of the thing. We mean by religion a scheme which shall 
explain to us the relations of the faculties of the human soul 
within, of man to his fellow-men beside him, to the world 
and its order around him ; next, that which brings him face 
to face with a Power to which he must bow, with a Providence 



THE BASIS OF MORALS 151 

which he must love and serve, with a Being which he must 
adore — that which, in fine, gives man a doctrine to believe, 
a discipline to live by, and an object to worship. This is 
the ancient meaning of Religion, and the fact of religion all 
over the world in every age. What is new in our scheme is 
merely that we avoid such terms as Infinite, Absolute, Im- 
material, and vague negatives altogether, resolutely con- 
fining ourselves to the sphere of what can be shown by ex- 
perience, of what is relative and not absolute, and wholly and 
frankly human. 



THE ETHICAL CONFERENCE 

A Conference of Ethical Societies, European and American, 
was to meet at Chicago during the month of September. 
Dr. Felix Adler, of New York, having invited Mr. 
Frederic Harrison to attend, as representing the Positivist 
movement, or if unable to attend to communicate a paper, 
the following address was sent to be submitted to the 
Conference. 

It is a matter of regret that the Positivists of Newton Hall 
find themselves unable to take personal part in the Confer- 
ence of Ethical Societies. Primarily and essentially, this 
body claims to be an Ethical Society ; for it seeks to promote 
the development of moral life on a strict basis of positive 
sociology and scientific ethics. It would therefore find itself 
in complete accord with all serious efforts to place the true 
culture of self and of the community on rational and human 
grounds. 

Whatever differences of view might arise between a Posi- 
tivist and an Ethical movement would be found — not in the 
common ground, which would extend over the entire pro- 
gramme of an Ethical Association — but in the further aim 
of the Positivist movement to add to ethical culture Phi- 
losophy and Religion. It would serve little purpose to en- 
large on the ground which is common to both Positive and 
Ethical movements. It will be more useful to state the 
grounds which, in the former point of view, make the ulti- 

152 



THE ETHICAL CONFERENCE 1 53 

mate extension of the ethical culture to Philosophy and Reli- 
gion not only legitimate but indispensable. Right conduct 
is the true end of a worthy human life. But our conduct is 
ultimately determined — not by what we are taught to do, 
or by what we should like to do — but by what we believe 
and what we revere. 

In using the word Religion, we are not giving it any theo- 
logical significance, nor are we limiting it to any special 
form of belief. The Chinese and the Negroes (not to mention 
many other races) have a formal religion which is entirely 
without God ; and in all schemes of belief which can be 
called religion there is a common element. That common 
element is (1) a belie ) in some Power recognised as greater 
than the individual or even than the community, as able to 
deal out good and evil, and as interested in the acts of the 
individual and the community, (2) a sense of reverence, awe, 
love, and gratitude towards such a Power, and some mode 
of making that sense manifest, and (3) certain practices, 
or course of conduct, or rules of life, which are believed to 
be welcome to that Power, and such as will procure its favour. 

It is not proposed to argue for any particular type of creed, 
worship, or practice. The argument of this paper is simply 
that ethical conduct is powerfully affected for good or for 
evil by the type of creed, worship, and discipline current in 
the society, or ruling the conscience of the individual. It 
follows that ethical culture, carried to whatever perfection, 
cannot secure any given course of conduct ; for a dominant 
religious belief may supersede and control the ethical sense, 
unless in a society where Religion is inoperative or atrophied. 

It is true that, for considerable groups and masses on both 
sides of the Atlantic, religion seems to have reached this in- 
operative stage, and acute persons are found to regard this as 
its final form. But the teaching of history is against this 



154 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

view ; for it shows us Man over incalculable periods of time, 
and under a thousand varying conditions, always powerfully 
stirred and modified by religion in one of its many types. 
And even in societies such as the working-class of Berlin or 
Paris, where it may seem that all sense of Religion is atrophied, 
it is difficult to maintain that the practical results of the re- 
ligious habits of centuries do not still mould conduct. 

In order to prove that Religion will not continue to in- 
fluence conduct in the future, it would be necessary to show 
that a tendency to recognise some dominant Power, and 
to feel strong emotions about such a Power, and to act 
under the control of that belief and those emotions, was not 
an innate habit of human nature. But philosophy proves 
no such thing ; no philosopher of repute has even attempted 
such proof ; and the best modern psychology of every school 
concurs in scientific analysis of those qualities of brain and 
heart which make up the compound religious instinct. Phi- 
losophers in turn expose the inadequacy of certain forms of 
religion; but they are constantly making more definite and 
positive the common element of religion, and its roots in 
Man's moral and mental structure which the various forms 
of religion are designed to satisfy. 

The same may, indeed, be said of Philosophy, understand- 
ing by the word Philosophy the sum of our knowledge of 
Nature and Man. So long as our philosophy was limited to 
physics, and the analogies of natural with moral and social 
science were not understood, it might be supposed that ethi- 
cal conduct was not controlled by our interpretation of the 
phenomena of Nature, at least for societies which had passed 
beyond the African, Hindoo, and Chinese types of civilisa- 
tion. But now that Philosophy has brought Nature and 
Man into line, and shows us in both correlative laws, and 
finds a similar evolution in societies and in ethics, it is im- 



THE ETHICAL CONFERENCE 1 55 

possible to doubt that moral conduct is ultimately controlled 
by the general ideas we hold about the laws of Man's moral 
and social life. 

The masses, it is true, are not aware that they have any 
philosophy, and it would be vain to talk to them about moral 
and social laws. But, just as they can speak intelligibly 
without knowing rules of grammar or even the names of parts 
of speech, so they have dominant habits of mind which affect 
their daily lives. Men, however ignorant, act differently ac- 
cording as they hold or deny that their acts have some re- 
lation to a superior Will. And a practical result is at once 
visible when men become accustomed to regard events and 
acts — not as decreed or inspired by arbitrary wills — but 
as the intelligible consequences of scientific law. See how 
different is the attitude in an outburst of cholera of the people 
of Berlin, Paris, or New York to that of the fatalist pilgrim 
to Mecca and Benares ! 

The result is that Religion and Philosophy so powerfully 
affect conduct, that no ethical culture can determine con- 
duct, unless by an alliance with Religion and Philosophy: — 
Religion meaning deep feeling about a Power believed to be 
supreme or superior, and Philosophy meaning general ideas 
about the order of Nature and the evolution of Man. At the 
very basis of ethical culture, at its threshold and on its crown, 
stands the problem of the relation of the individual to the 
society, and the crucial problem, how to harmonise the claims 
of the individual and of the social ideal. No one can doubt 
that both Religion and Philosophy have very much to say 
on this crucial problem, and that the whole ethical solution 
may be recast, whatever ethical training there may have been, 
say, under an overmastering religious enthusiasm such as that 
preached by Buddha or St. Francis. Or suppose a dogmatic 
scheme of individualism based on a general physical and 



156 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

social philosophy such as that which animated the rigid Po- 
litical Economy of the last generation, and which sprang 
from the self-interest doctrines of Bentham. 

The difficulties which encompass all human efforts after 
right conduct amidst the spasmodic forces of appetite and 
interest are enormous; and civilisation, which on the one 
hand strengthens the resources of moral culture, on the other 
hand opens new and subtle modes in which appetite and 
interest can find gratification. Morality, however pure and 
elevated, must always remain a somewhat tepid and prosaic 
stimulus when contrasted with the whirlwind of passion and 
the subtle phthisis of self-interest. It is certain that Man's 
benevolent instincts never reach the red heat of lust and hate. 

History shows us one force, and one only, which has ever 
successfully contended with these appetites and conquered 
the promptings of self. That force is Religion, in some form. 
It may be in a bad form — Moloch-worship ; Obeism ; the 
devotion to Tribe, City, Church, Sect, or Prophet. But 
the passionate submission of self to some dominant Power 
or Idea, to whom life itself is owed, has in all ages proved 
strong enough to overmaster the stings of appetite and even 
the instinct of escaping pain or death. The white heat of 
religious enthusiasm has proved stronger than the red heat of 
selfish desire. And nothing else in the history of mankind 
has done that. Civilisation, so far as it is limited to mere 
ethical culture, may somewhat diminish violence, though it 
makes murder even more diabolically deliberate ; but on the 
other hand it is the soil in which fraud grows like a deadly 
fungus. 

It is quite true that Religion has only done this imperfectly 
and unsteadily, acting only in certain ages and societies, 
or on given persons, and in special spheres of human life. 
And it is true that Religion in the most advanced societies 



THE ETHICAL CONFERENCE 1 57 

of the Old and the New World seems to have lost its savour, 
like the salt in the Testament parable. Else, what would 
be the meaning of an ethical movement outside and inde- 
pendent of the Gospel? But the true explanation is that 
the salt has lost its savour, because its whole intellectual basis 
is honeycombed, because it has got into a hopeless conflict 
with science, and because philosophy has proved that even 
its ethical standard is crude and misleading. That is the 
point from which we set out — viz. that ethical culture, 
religion, and philosophy are really so much interdependent 
and so organically correlated that it is only possible to treat 
them as separate for temporary and special purposes. They 
are not independent institutions which can be applied to the 
conduct of life without reference to each other. We can no 
more isolate any one, except for study, analysis, and com- 
parison, than we can cure an ailing human body by exclusive 
treatment of the digestive, nervous, or vascular system, treat- 
ing any one of these as being practically independent of the 
other two. What is needed is a synthesis of human life — 
not an analytic ethical culture. 

On these grounds we who meet in Newton Hall believe 
that any permanent movement for ethical culture must be at 
the same time a movement for religious and philosophical 
culture jointly. Indeed, the religious and the philosophical 
problems are really antecedent — must come first. These 
problems are truly the basis : they govern and determine the 
ethical problem. Conduct is the result of the Ideal that we 
revere, plus the Truth which we know to be supreme. When 
we have settled on the Ideal as an object of love and devotion 
— when we have recognised the limit of human knowledge — 
then we may build up our ethical culture in accordance with 
our religious emotions and our philosophical beliefs. As we 
said at the beginning, neither religion nor philosophy can, 



158 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

in our view, transcend this planet, human nature and human 
life as found thereon, and the sphere of demonstrable science. 
We will admit nothing super-human in Religion, and nothing 
supra-scientific in Philosophy. We find both, here on earth 
and in the domain of verifiable knowledge. Nothing has 
been said in this communication about Positivism as a system, 
Auguste Comte as a teacher, or Humanity as an object of 
reverence. We have argued the question on general grounds. 
But it will be understood that we find the base of ethical 
culture in the practical service of Humanity by the light of the 
general doctrines of Positive Philosophy. 



XI 

NATURAL THEOLOGY 

Sufficient attention has not yet been given to a very 
acute, very learned, and eminently judicial estimate of Natural 
Theology by the light of modern science, the last, and, alas ! 
the posthumous work of the late Mr. W. M. W. Call. 1 As 
so much of Mr. Call's work was given to the Westminster 
Review now more than forty years ago, and to other unsigned 
organs of free inquiry, the general public which reads so little 
philosophy was not aware how much learning, acuteness, 
and truthfulness of nature was covered under the modest 
and simple life of one who had become a clergyman in the 
Church some sixty years ago, and, after a long and painful 
struggle of years, had withdrawn for conscience' sake from 
a position which he felt to be morally and intellectually 
unbearable. 

This little volume opens with a pathetic and most gracefully 
written chapter from the unpublished autobiography of the 
author. It is the story of a deeply religious mind, fascinated 
by the Bible in childhood, roused in boyhood by Byron and 
Shelley, half inspired by Coleridge and latitudinarian the- 
ology, and ultimately finding a temporary rest in the ministry 
of the Church of England. Then follows a deeply interesting 
and candid unveiling of the torments of spirit through which 
many an acute and conscientious mind in the orthodox fold 
must have passed in the last generation when hell, inspira- 

1 Final Cause* — a Refutation. By Watheo Mark Wilki Call, M.A. 

Kegan Paul, Tnnrh, and Co. i2mo, [89 1. 

*59 



l60 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

tion and authenticity of the Bible, and the supernatural 
machinery of Christianity began to fade away like bad dreams. 
The simple, truthful, modest story of all that it cost a con- 
scientious priest to retire from his profession and to devote 
his life to the patient but obscure pursuit of honest and labo- 
rious study, makes an impressive introduction to a learned 
investigation of the scientific grounds of natural theology. 

When first relieved from the bonds of an absolute ortho- 
doxy, Mr. Call found himself in the shifting phases of the 
vague Theisms of the schools of Bentham, Hegel, Mazzini, 
or Mill. But the systematic study of physical science, into 
which he threw himself, and an absorbing interest in the 
philosophy of evolution, gradually taught him the hollow- 
ness of the foundations of theology, apart from revelation. 
And impressed with all the waste of thought, the shallow 
inconsequence, and the moral confusion involved in the 
Theistic hypothesis, he prepared this book with great deliber- 
ation and research. And he brings us to the conclusion 
wherein he at last found rest: "The sole sacred ideal that 
remains to us is that of humanity; not of the human race 
indiscriminately, but of the purer, nobler constituents of it, 
the great collective existence/ which ever lives and ever learns,' 
the mystical association of all intellects, of all loves, of all 
forces, the object of all our efforts, the sovereign to whom 
we are all responsible. . . . These sentiments, this en- 
thusiasm, this devotedness, form, as Mr. Mill acknowledges, 
a real religion" (p. 159). 

Mr. Call begins by examining the great argument, which 
runs through so many forms of Natural Theology, that the 
order and harmony discoverable in the world force us to at- 
tribute to it a divine origin. But where does this argument 
rest, when we have once grasped in all its fulness the idea 
of the relativity of knowledge ? We can only know this order 



NATURAL THEOLOGY l6l 

and harmony in terms of the human mind. We cannot 
pierce to any absolute order and harmony. The order and 
the harmony we perceive, in fact, are simply modes in which 
the human mind arranges the infinite phenomena of an ever- 
changing world. Time and space, in which they all seem to 
us to be conditioned, are forms of the human intelligence. 
Why do we assume a divine origin of an order and a harmony 
that are conditioned by the laws of our very finite intelligence ? 
The order and harmony then seem to be reflections which the 
mind itself projects upon the revolving panorama of the 
external world. So far as they prove anything, they prove 
the synthetic power of the human spectator. Man is quite 
conscious that the world has not a human origin; and that 
is all he knows of origins at all. 

More careful examination is ever showing how very im- 
perfect is the order which the science of the last century 
hastily assumed to be perfect. The moon, we used to be 
told in childhood, was created to give light to the earth, and 
was assumed to be the abode of happy beings. The simplest 
geometry can prove that if such had been the object, it had 
not been achieved, although it was very easy to accomplish ; 
and that so far as we can see, the moon is a lifeless void. 
The result of modern science is to multiply the record of waste, 
ill-adjustment, disorder, and strife through the entire physical 
universe. "For countless ages, this earth was a dungeon of 
pestiferous exhalations and a den of wild beasts." It was 
all for our good, we are told by theology, and so was the crea- 
tion of earthquakes, disease, death, and sin. Modern science 
is far too cautious, and possibly too well-trained, to repeal 
the ribaldry of the Spanish monarch who spoke so slightingly 
of creation; but it assures us in every corner of the visible 
universe, thai the apparent order and evolution are not what 
human science would have recommended, had it been con- 

M 



l62 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

suited at the origin. It may serve some higher purpose. 
But, humanly speaking, it is full of disorder. 

From general considerations of the " Universal Har- 
mony," Mr. Call passes to special adaptations. He works 
out the argument that adaptation implies limitation. An 
ingenious artist invents the 'safety lamp for dangerous mines. 
He is limited by the antecedent condition of inflammable 
gas. But why should Providence in its mercy create fire- 
damp at all ? And if it at last gives Man the means of coun- 
teracting fire-damp, it has subjected millions to cruel death. 
The whole question of death, of the decay, disease, and 
destruction which lead to death, the infinite forms of organic 
suffering and of physical war and waste, are arrayed by 
Mr. Call in a crushing dilemma. Things around us may 
be adapted to given ends, but why is Man, organic nature, 
— nay, inorganic nature, — adapted to meet such agony, 
such waste, such deadly strife, such appalling destruction? 
There are some to whom all this has seemed to testify to a 
diabolic intelligence, or at least to the dualism of a good and 
evil principle, not unequally matched and waging an eternal 
war with alternate success and defeat. 

The champions of divine adaptation have usually selected 
a particular organ ; and none has given rise to more inge- 
nuity than the form of the eye. The eye is unquestionably a 
wonderful example of complex structure adapted to a subtle 
process. Mr. Call quotes Helmholtz's criticism of the eye 
as an optical instrument. The defects are very numerous 
and easily remediable by the contriver of the organ. All 
kinds of imperfection in every part of the organ are obvious, 
and are easily avoided in Man's own optical instruments. 
Many of them are quite familiar, even in elementary science. 
Professor Tyndall quotes and approves Helmholtz's saying, 
"that if an optician sent him an instrument so full of defects 



NATURAL THEOLOGY I 63 

as the human eye, he would be justified in sending it back 
with the severest censure." The defects of our eye exceed 
any defects of our telescope. If modern astronomers could 
design the eye as well as the telescope, what might we not 
now know ! Evolution, or spontaneous adaptation to uses, 
by gradual and struggling steps, fully accounts for the de- 
fects of the eye. It is a witness to evolution — but not to 
omniscience. 

Another favourite argument of Natural Theology is the 
instinct of animals; and none has been more popular than 
our old friend the busy bee. It used to be held that the cell 
of the bee-hive showed mathematical attainments of a high 
order, as exactly the form best adapted to store the maxi- 
mum of honey with the minimum of wax. But recent 
science has greatly diminished both the precision and the 
mysteriousness of the bee's cell. Darwin found it a simple 
example of natural selection; and* a reverend bee-master 
observed that the form of the cell was the mechanical result 
of six bees (the number which could form a ring round one) 
poking their heads together. The bee is a very interesting 
animal; but its " instinct" is not more surprising than that 
of many other animals. And there is nothing more divine 
in its instinct than there is in theirs. And no " instinct" 
has anything like the divine character of the human intel- 
ligence. And this, alas! as we know to our cost, may take 
a truly diabolic turn for evil. 

Theologians and thcistical philosophers have long aban- 
doned the syllogisms of Voltaire and Palcy, which so greatly 
delighted our grandfathers, of the Universe being regarded as 
a work of art, as an intricate mechanism, from which we must 
infer a Creator, as we infer a watchmaker from a watch. 
More acute and also more reverent reflection has shown 
that this is but one of the many types of anthropomorphism. 



1 64 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

We infer a watchmaker when we find a watch, only because 
we understand the watch's uses and are familiar with the 
watchmaker's art. To infer that we can follow the purpose 
of the watchmaker of the Universe is to attribute to the Ab- 
solute and the Infinite our infinitesimal limitations, and to 
measure Omniscience and Omnipotence by the Crude ex- 
pedients which mortal men employ when struggling with the 
difficulties of their environment. Art, ingenuity, elaborate 
mechanism, presuppose a hard fight with intractable mate- 
rials, and a qualified and incomplete result. Logically, the 
bare idea of contrivance is a contradiction to Creation. 
And he who is the artist or the mechanic cannot be God. 

To meet this dilemma some modern theologians postulate 
a limited, or as Mr. Call names him, a constitutional Deity. 
Mr. Mill rejected, almost with indignation, the idea of an 
Omnipotent Creator; for the moral evils abounding in 
Creation shocked his sensitive spirit. He argued, as others 
have done, for some Force, external to the Creator, and out- 
side of Creation, which imposed definite limits on Deity, 
and compelled him to resort to expedients, as an artificer 
does, and to accept evils which he might mitigate but could 
not remove. Mr. Call presses home the irresistible dilemma 
that a Creator, so limited, is no Creator at all ; that a power- 
ful, but far from omnipotent being, struggling with the ob- 
stacles which an External Force has imposed on him, like 
Prometheus on Caucasus, does not answer to the first idea 
of deity at all, and satisfies none of the yearnings of the The- 
istic conscience. The external Force would be the ultimate 
Cause, after all, the presumed Creator, like the destiny of the 
ancient Olympus. An idea reconcilable indeed with Poly- 
theism, but assuredly not with Monotheism. 

And then, as Mr. Call points out, there is this further 
difficulty. On what ground do we assume absolute Benevo- 



NATURAL THEOLOGY 1 65 

lence with limited power, rather than absolute Power with 
limited goodness? Our ancestors, who were less sensitive 
than we are, found no difficulty in accepting fearful moral 
dilemmas in the mysterious works of Providence; but they 
would never admit a suspicion of a check on Omnipotent 
Power. Dante saw the Law of Primal Love graven on the 
portals of Hell. He would have rent his garments in horror 
at the idea of a Deity who found himself incessantly baffled 
and controlled. Mr. Mill, like many sentimentalists, shrank 
from Hell and from many a moral dilemma, and preferred 
a struggling Deity to a merciless Deity. But there is not the 
slightest ground in logic or in general philosophy why we 
should exalt the Goodness of the Creator at the expense of his 
Omnipotence, and escape from a dilemma by voluntarily 
degrading our conception of Godhead. A limited God 
implies the idea of many Gods ; and however much men may 
love him, they will fail to reverence him. A struggling God 
and an unjust God are alike contradictions in terms — at 
any rate to those who think belief in one God to be higher 
belief in many Gods. 

The most important and interesting part of Mr. Call's 
work is devoted to the conception of the " Evolutionary 
God," i.e. the notion of Creation as affected by the scientific- 
theories of the last forty years. Natural Theology, like so 
many other branches of thought, has had to recast its entire 
scheme under the pressure of the doctrine of evolution. One 
resource is, to imagine the gradual and tentative process of 
evolutionary adaptation (which, it is now impossible to doubt, 
is stamped upon living Nature) to be but a practical working 
out of a Type or Idea, the immediate and direct emanation 
of the Creator. It is curious to see Platonism revived after 
two thousand years; but the part which Plato had in founding 
the orthodox creed has been fully appreciated only by Comte, 



1 66 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

who makes Plato the chief of six of the Fathers of the Eastern 
Church, including St. John the Evangelist. Mr. Call points 
out, with unhesitating logic, the weakness involved in this cir- 
cuitous Teleology, which only puts the difficulty one step 
further back, and simply divides into two sections the di- 
lemmas that surround all ideas, first, of a First Cause ; and 
next, of the imperfections and strife of Nature. 

These dilemmas Mr. Call treats under the five heads of: 
(i) Destructive action; (2) imperfect execution; (3) use- 
less or mischievous contrivance; (4) arbitrary, capricious, 
and whimsical treatment; and (5) circuitous procedure. 
Under each head he gives us a body of striking illustrations 
from recent scientific authority. The vast mass of the lit- 
erature of evolution is indeed a record of all these in turn. 

1. As to the record of waste and destruction the growth 
of modern science has enormously increased our conception 
of its range. Microscopic and embryologic study present 
us with a world in which waste, destruction, and mutual 
antagonism appear as the law of life so that what was once 
recognised as Infinite Creation is now felt to be balanced by 
an equally Infinite Destruction. If the cosmos, with all its 
continuous dissolution, be the work of one Omnipotent Force, 
it would be as logical to attribute it to a Destroyer as to a 
Creator. 

2. Imperfect execution seems rather the rule than the 
exception, when we study Nature by the light of evolution. 
The bee's sting, which, if it defends the animal, cannot be used 
without causing its death, is a familiar example. The whole 
natural history of the bee, now more fully understood, is one 
tale of frustrated execution. The enormous waste of drones, 
who die in the single act of which they are capable, is but 
one example. Though the frustration of purpose is most 
conspicuous in the insects, it runs through the whole of living 



NATURAL THEOLOGY I 67 

Nature, where almost every function is liable to lead direct 
to opposite consequences as the environment determines. 

3. Useless or mischievous contrivance is the common- 
place of the evolutionist. All the "sports" and anomalies 
of Nature are examples. The growth of organs, tissues, 
processes, and parts, under conditions where they cannot 
serve their normal functions, and only conduce to mischief, 
is familiar to all pathologists and all naturalists. The limbs 
concealed in the outer integument so as to be utterly useless, 
the rudimentary parts of Man and other animals, the coccyx 
of man, the concealed eye of creatures which live out of the 
light and do not see at all, the whole history of hermaphro- 
ditism and the like — these things form the delight and pride 
of the Biologist, inasmuch as they testify to gradual adapta- 
tion, whilst they are the despair and shame of the Teleologist, 
for they testify to wasted ingenuity in contriving elaborate 
mechanism that leads to no result or to a mischievous result. 

4. Wanton, capricious, and whimsical treatment is a 
kindred field of evolutionary observation. Mr. Darwin 
revelled in following out examples of this. The grotesque 
forms, habits, and colours of the animal world, their fantastic 
tricks, childish vanities and amusements, their most indecorous 
amours, their scoundrelly and murderous propensities, the 
diabolical ingenuity of the sphex which paralyses without 
killing spiders to form a living food for its grubs when hatched 
— of all these things Nature is made. They have intense 
interest for the evolutionist, whatever disgust they excite 
in the moralist. The dilemma of the teleologist is this : if all 
these ludicrous and disgusting contrivances are the ideas of 
Divine Omnipotence, it is difficult to bring it into line with 
the first postulates of human morality and intelligence. 

5. The last head, circuitous procedure, is the most abun- 
dant of all. Of course, the entire scheme of evolution is one 



1 68 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of circuitous, gradual, laborious transformation, under the 
pressure of varying conditions. That idea alone was enough 
to put an end to Teleology. For as the final adaptation to 
an actual end is fairly complete in large parts of Nature, the 
idea of direct creation with a view to that end was obvious, 
and far from absurd. But, when every extant organism is 
found or supposed to have passed through a series of dis- 
parate stages, and organic and inorganic Nature is conceived 
as the composite outcome of infinite transformation, every- 
thing on earth is assumed to have an origin so circuitous, 
multiform, and heterogeneous, that the bare idea of Creation 
for that end becomes at once repulsive and irrational. And 
what end ? — for in evolution there is neither beginning 
nor end. And if all things living have slowly emerged out 
of protoplasm in infinite seons of labour and change, what is 
there of divine in a Creation so slow, so laborious, and so 
unlovely ? 

Mr. Call concludes his book with a warning chapter to 
remind us that he is no pessimist, but a true meliorist. He 
sees far too much waste and horror in the Universe to feel 
that it is all the work of Omnipotent Goodness. He sees far 
too much growing improvement on this earth not to hope for 
an ever better and better world. He is careful also to point 
out that he has not argued against the existence of God, nor 
has he touched any single ontological, psychological, or moral 
argument for the existence of Providence. He has argued 
only against the vain attempt to prove from science the sup- 
posed design of an assumed Creation. Nor, he is careful to 
add, does he personally refuse to accept the spiritual ideals 
that are familiar to Christendom, apart from the pretensions 
of Christian dogma. He would include "the teaching of 
Jesus and of Paul in one series with that of their predecessors 
and successors." In a fine conclusion, he sums up the hope 



NATURAL THEOLOGY I 69 

of the religion of the Future, when " Humanity will be the 
sole Ideal Object to which dutiful obligation and exalted 
sentiment will be referred, and the world of Humanity will 
be the world revealed, not by divine inspiration or meta- 
physical intuition, but by Positive Science." 



XII 

LAW OF THE THREE STATES 

A Reply to an article by Bishop Harvey Goodwin in the 
" Nineteenth Century " October 1886 

Only the high office and good name of the Bishop of 
Carlisle could justify serious notice of his article entitled 
"Comte's famous Fallacy." His piece is based on a mis- 
conception — a typical example, indeed, of ignorantia elenchi 
— nay, a misconception which has often before been made 
by theologians, and which has been over and over again 
exposed. Yet such is the persistence of the "theological 
stage," even in the nineteenth century, that here the old prim- 
itive " fiction" about the meaning of Comte's "law of the 
three states" crops up again after twenty or thirty years, 
apparently under the impression that it is a new discovery. 
To any serious student of philosophy it might be enough to 
cite half a dozen passages from Comte, Mill, Lewes, and 
others, to show that the "law of the three states" has no such 
meaning as the Bishop puts into it. But when a writer, who 
has won in other fields a deserved reputation, gravely puts 
forth a challenge to his philosophical opponents, although 
rather by way of sermon and for edification than by way of 
strict logic, perhaps it is respectful to do more than cite a 
few passages from the author whom he attacks. 

Two main misconceptions pervade the whole of the Bishop's 
criticism on Comte's law. 

First; he understands the "theological" state to mean, 

170 



LAW OF THE THREE STATES \J\ 

a belief in a Creator; the "metaphysical" state to mean, gen- 
eral philosophy; and the " positive" state to mean, the 
denial of Creation, or atheism. Now, that never was, and 
never was understood to be, Comte's meaning. 

Secondly, the Bishop assumes Comte to have said, that 
men, or a generation of men, are necessarily at any given 
time, in one or other of the three states exclusively, passing 
per solium, and as a whole, from one to the other ; and that 
one mind cannot combine any two states. Now, Comte ex- 
pressly said that men do exhibit traces of all three states at the 
same time, in different departments of thought. 

This last remark of his obviously proves that Comte could 
not have meant by the "theological state," believing in God, 
and by the "positive state," the denial of God; because no 
man can believe and deny the same thing at the same time. 
Again, had Comte said that every man "up to his age" can 
remember that he believed in God in his childhood, and that 
he denied his existence in manhood, he would have said some- 
thing so transparently false, that it would hardly be needful 
for a Bishop forty years afterwards to write an essay to ex- 
pose so very "famous a fallacy." Had Comte's law of the 
three states implied what the Bishop takes it to mean, it 
never would have received the importance attached to it by 
friends and opponents of Positivism alike ; it never would 
have been a "famous fallacy" at all ; it would have been the 
"obvious fallacy," and would have called forth no admira- 
tion from eminent thinkers. 

It must be remembered that the value of "the law of the 
three states" has been acknowledged by men who have been 
as far as possible from being "Positivists" in any special 
sense of the term, and who have been foremost in repudiating 
Comic's social and religious scheme. Mr. Mill, who wrote 
a book to that effect, expressed his profound admiration for 



1^2 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

this particular law of philosophy. So did Mr. G. H. Lewes 
in his History 0} Philosophy. Miss Martineau, Professor 
Caird, Mr. John Morley, who have written upon the system 
of Comte, have given us no criticism upon the principle in- 
volved in this "law of the three states." It is, to say the 
least, unlikely that writers like these would have missed so 
obvious a criticism as that now put forth by the Bishop, had 
they understood Comte as he does. 

Forty years ago, Mr. Mill gave an admirably lucid account 
of the "law of the three states," and at the same time ex- 
pressed his agreement with it, in words that are remarkable 
as coming from so cautious and measured a mind. He 
says : — 

Speculation, he [Comte] conceives to have, on every subject of human 
inquiry, three successive stages ; in the first of which it tends to explain 
the phenomena by supernatural agencies, in the second by metaphysical 
abstractions, and in the third or final state confines itself to ascertaining 
their laws of succession and similitude. This generalisation appears 
to me to have that high degree of scientific evidence, which is derived from 
the concurrence of the indications of history with the probabilities derived 
from the constitution of the human mind. Nor could it be easily con- 
ceived, from the mere enunciation of such a proposition, what a flood 
of light it lets in upon the whole course of history {Logic, vol. ii. chap. x.). 

I. By the term "theological state," Comte does not mean 
the ultimate belief in God. He means, as Mr. Mill says in 
the words quoted, a state in which the mind " tends to ex- 
plain (given) phenomena by supernatural agencies." Comte 
first put forth his law in an essay published so early as 1822, 
where he states the theological stage to be one where, "the 
facts observed are explained, that is to say, conceived a priori, 
by means of invented facts." (Pos. Pol. iv. App. iii.) In 
his General View of Positivism, he calls the theological stage 
that "in which free play is given to spontaneous fictions ad- 



LAW OF THE THREE STATES 1 73 

milting 0} no proof." In the Positive Polity, he usually calls 
it the Fictitious stage. The theological state of mind is one 
where the phenomena we observe are supposed to be directly 
caused by vital agencies which we imagine, but of the activity 
of which we have no real proof. 

This state is certainly not identical with a belief in God; 
it includes all forms of Fetichism, of Nature worship, Ghost 
worship, or Devil worship : and all the habits of mind out 
of which these forms of worship spring. The nonsense 
known as Spiritualism, Spirit-rapping, viewing the Dead, and 
the like, is a typical form of the theological state, in which 
men give "free play to fictions admitting of no proof." And 
men, otherwise eminent in science and letters, have been 
known so to play, even when they have ceased to believe in 
God. 

Not only is Comte's "theological stage" something widely 
different from ultimate belief in a Creator, but few educated 
men, however deeply they hold such belief, are now in what 
Comte calls the "theological stage." To all minds "up to 
the level of their age," even of theologians by profession, the 
phenomena of Nature and of society are associated with 
regular antecedents, capable of being explained by known 
laws, physical, social, or moral. That is in fact the "posi- 
tive," or scientific state of thought. If a man has a fit, or 
if small-pox breaks out, or two nations go to war, intelligent 
Christians do not cry aloud that it is a special judgment, or 
the wrath of God, or the malice of the Devil. They trace 
the disease or the war to its scientific causes, or rather to its 
positive conditions. Men in the true theological stage 
attribute ordinary phenomena to the direct and special inter- 
position of a supernatural being of some kind. This was 
done by devotees in the Middle Ages ; is still done by Fetich 
ists everywhere; and by the negroes the other day during the 



174 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

earthquake at Charlestown. But cultivated Englishmen 
do not so reason. In fact, very few thoughtful men in our 
age can be said to be, properly speaking, in the theological 
stage at all. They reason about life and Man on the basis 
of both being amenable to observed laws, and not on the 
basis that both are directly subject to the caprice of super- 
natural wills. 

The habitual reference of facts to observed conditions of 
nature, physical or human, does not prevent strong minds 
from believing in Creation and a Personal Creator. That 
is a very different thing. They refer all observed facts to 
observed antecedents; and behind this enormous mass of 
observations, they assume an ultimate source, as First Cause. 
Mr. Mill indeed insists that it is quite compatible with the 
Positive state in Comte's sense, to believe that the Universe 
is guided by an Intelligence. Comte himself warmly re- 
pudiates the atheistical hypothesis of the origin of the Uni- 
verse from Chance. He calls Atheism a form of Theology : 
meaning that Dogmatic Atheism, as a theory of the Universe, 
is "a spontaneous fiction admitting of no proof" He thought 
that a mind perfectly attuned to scientific habits in all forms 
of observed facts, would cease to busy itself with any theory 
of Origins, and would be entirely absorbed in theories of 
growth. But he would not have regarded as being in the 
theological stage, any mind which, taking a scientific view 
of all observed phenomena, clung to the ultimate solution of 
their origin in Creation. 

II. By the "positive" stage, Comte certainly does not 
mean Atheism, the denial of a possible Creator. In the first 
place, he repudiates that hypothesis, as itself a form of The- 
ological figment. And secondly, he says that the Positive 
stage is that "which is based on an exact view of the real 
facts of the case." That is what he means : neither more nor 



LAW OF THE THREE STATES 1 75 

less. And the Bishop is quite mistaken in constantly as- 
suming that Positive is either Positivist or Atheist. Comte 
neither said, nor imagined, that any man who "takes an 
exact view of the real facts" in each case is a Positivist or a 
believer in the Religion of Humanity. Dr. Martineau in the 
passage cited with approval by the Bishop, does indeed make 
Comte say that every cultivated man is a Positivist in his 
maturity. That, however, is only a bit of careless rhetoric. 
Comte says nothing of the kind. Comte says that a culti- 
vated man becomes u a natural philosopher 1 '' in his maturity: 
— meaning a man whose habit of mind is to accept scientific 
evidence in each subject. 

III. It is no objection at all to the "law of the three 
states" to argue, as the Bishop does, that many men of science 
are not atheists, but believers in God. Even if the "the- 
ological stage" and the "positive stage" had this meaning 
(and they have not) Comte has carefully guarded himself by 
saying that many persons exhibit all three stages at the same 
time, on different subject-matters. His law is not that "each 
human mind passes through three stages": but that "each 
class of human speculations does." If that were Comte's 
meaning, the whole of the Bishop's criticism falls to the 
ground. And it is easy to show that this was Comte's mean- 
ing. 

Had the Bishop pursued his study of Comte a little beyond 
the opening pages of a translation of one of his works, he 
would have found this. In the second volume of the Posi- 
tive Philosophy fist ed. p. 173), we read: — 



During the whole of our survey of the sciences, T have endeavoured 
to keep in view the threat fact that all the three states, theological, meta- 
physical, and positive, may and do exist at the same time in the same 
mind in regard to different sciences. I must once more- recall this con- 



176 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

sideration, and insist on it; because, in the forgetfulness of it, lies the 
only real objection that can be brought against the grand law of the 
three states. It must be steadily kept in view that the same mind may 
be in the positive state with regard to the most simple and general 
sciences; in the metaphysical with regard to the more complex and 
special; and in the theological with regard to social science, which is 
so complex and special as to have hitherto taken no scientific form at all. 

Again in the Positive Polity, iii. p. 34: — 

Although each class of speculations really passes through these three 
successive stages, the rate of progress is not the same for all. Hence 
while some speculations have already become Positive, others still remain 
Metaphysical or even Theological; and so it will be till our race has 
entirely accomplished its initiation. This temporary co-existence of the 
three intellectual states furnishes backward thinkers with their only plaus- 
ible excuse for denying my law of filiation. Nothing will completely 
clear away this difficulty but the complementary rule, which lays down 
that the unequal rate of progress is caused by the different nature of the 
phenomena in each class. 

In the Positivist Catechism, he says (Engl. tr. p. 174) : — 

Certain theories remain in the metaphysical stage ; whilst others of a 
simpler nature have already reached the positive stage; others again, 
still more complicated, remain in the theological stage. 

It is thus abundantly clear that Comte intended his law 
of the three states to be applied not to the mind as a whole, 
nor to ages as a whole but to different classes of speculation, 
and to the prevalent tendencies in different ages. And so 
he has been always understood by his exponents. Mr. 
Mill in his book, Auguste Comte and Positivism, to meet 
an objection such as the Bishop now urges, writes thus : — 
"that the three states were contemporaneous, that they all 
began before authentic history, and still co-exist, is M. 
Comte's express statement" (p. 31). 



LAW OF THE THREE STATES 177 

And so Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his more lively manner, reply- 
ing to similar objections, tells us in his History of Philosophy 
(vol. ii. p. 715) : — 

To these causes of opposition must also be added the license men 
permit themselves of pronouncing confidently on questions which they 
have not taken the preliminary trouble of understanding. Two-thirds 
of the objections urged against this law of the three stages are based on 
a radical misapprehension of it ; and there is something quite comic in 
the gravity with which these misconceptions are advanced. 

The law does not assert that at distinct historical periods men were 
successively in each of the three stages, that there was a time when a 
nation or even a tribe was exclusively theological, exclusively meta- 
physical, or exclusively positive; it asserts that the chief conceptions 
man frames respecting the world, himself, and society, must pass through 
three stages, with varying velocity under various social conditions, but 
in unvarying order. Any one individual mind, inheriting the results 
of preceding generations, may indeed commence its thinking on some 
special topic, without being forced to pass through the stages which its 
predecessors have passed through; but every class of conceptions must 
pass through the stages, and every individual mind must, more or less 
rapidly, in the course of its evolution from infancy to maturity, pass 
through them. 

Another eminent controversialist, once Regius Professor 
of History in the University of Oxford, fell into the same 
error as the Bishop, as long ago as 1861, and he was corrected 
at the time. This is how the blunder was corrected in the 
Westminster Review, N. S. xl. 

The Review said : — 

Comte invariably insists that the three stages have actually co-existed 
in nearly all minds. He says that a man takes a theological view of one 
subject, a metaphysical of another, and a positive of a third; nor did 
he ever pretend that one of these methods rigidly excludes the other. 
minds retain traces of all three, even in the same subject-matter. 
What an objector has really to show is this, that men US€ other methods 
of thought, or that they do not in the main use these successively in the 
order stated, and that in projxjrtion to the complication of the subject- 
matter. 

N 



178 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

In considering a law of the human mind, such as this is, 
we should bear in mind the golden rule of Aristotle "to 
demand that degree of precision that fits the matter in hand." 
A law of our mental evolution, dealing with a subject so 
subtle and complex as the reasoning processes, does not admit 
of absolutely rigid mathematical exactness. Mathematical 
reasoning alone, partly because pure mathematics spring 
mainly from laws of the mind itself, and are not inductions 
from few and imperfect observations, admits of absolute 
precision. In no physical science, perhaps, is the reasoner 
at all times strictly employing scientific methods without alloy. 
Few men of science, however competent, are incapable of 
error in their reasoning; and we know how liable they are 
to slide into dogmatism a good deal short of positive proof. 
But for all that, a trained physicist, or chemist, is properly 
said to be in the positive stage of thought when reasoning 
about physics, or chemistry. 

A few minds trained in a variety of sciences may remain 
at a uniformly positive level. If their scientific training 
embraces history, morals, philosophy, and the entire range 
of the social, moral, and intellectual laws, then they may 
be said to have completely attained to the positive stage of 
thought. Now the Creation of the Universe and the Moral 
Providence of all Creation is an ultimate resultant of a man's 
reflections in the whole range of speculation — physical, 
social, intellectual, and moral. And to that great assize 
of human thought, few men in England come with a full 
positive training in the entire range. Hence the opinions 
about Creation of men like Herschel, or Faraday, are not the 
opinions of men in the positive stage of thought, but of men 
in the positive stage of astronomy, and chemistry, and in the 
metaphysical or the theological stage, in sociology and in 
morals. 



LAW OF THE THREE STATES 1 79 

When Faraday was dealing with gases, he was rigidly 
working out physical and chemical problems on the basis of 
physical and chemical laws. If he discovered a new elec- 
trical phenomenon, he did not, as a savage or an alchemist 
might, attribute the flash to some latent god, or an explosion 
to some bottled-up devil. When Faraday was dealing with 
the special inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he deliberately put 
aside all reference to law, or to science; and he was in the 
Theological stage. He was in the Metaphysical stage when 
he was dealing with some big political problem, and then he 
grounded his opinion entirely on strong prejudices formed 
in youth, but certainly not tested as he tested his chemical 
compounds. The "law of the three states" is, like all other 
logical laws, a law of tendency in a subtle and complex organ ; 
and absolute exactness and rigid exclusiveness is out of place 
with our imperfect mental resources. 

When Comte said that one state of mind excludes the 
other, he did not imply that a reasoner never makes a slip, 
or that a mind in the positive stage may not at times "revert" 
back into a less scientific process. He meant that, in the 
main, a mind accustomed to true scientific processes in any 
class of speculation will adhere to that habit of mind, though 
it may occasionally lapse in its own subject, and may fail 
to apply the same scientific process in another class of spec- 
ulation. The Bishop of Carlisle undoubtedly applies a truly 
positive process to the science of physics, though perhaps 
be would hardly claim to be infallible there, even in method. 
But in dealing with a philosophy at once "pernicious and 
dangerous," he collates the original authorities with far less 
patient scrutiny than when he is tracing the growth of the 
Baconian induction. 

Finally, the Bishop seems to me to err in seeking to test 
the "law of the three stages" by applying it to exact and real 



l8o PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

science. He declares that there are no three stages in 
Mathematics, in the science of Political Economy, and many 
such branches of our knowledge. Certainly, there are no 
three stages in any kind of real knowledge. Nor, strictly 
speaking, are there in any science — much less in exact science. 
All real knowledge, all science, truly so named, and certainly 
an exact science, like pure Mathematics, is already positive. 
Comte never said that there were three stages in science. 
He says there are "three stages in each branch of speculation." 
In many subjects, which are perfectly simple, a really positive 
state of thought is reached in the very infancy of the individual 
and the race. No doubt, there is a brief moment in the evo- 
lution of thought when fictitious beings, or crude abstractions, 
are supposed to determine the very simplest and commonest 
facts. When scarcity of food was thought to be a Divine 
warning to a King who defied the Pope, or when a strike 
was supposed to result from some physical law of Supply and 
Demand beyond human control, Political Economy was in 
the theological or the metaphysical stage. That merchants, 
manufacturers, or workmen believe in Creation, or believe 
in Adam Smith, or in Mr. Ruskin, has nothing to do with 
Comte's law. 

As to Mathematics something further may be said. Pure 
Mathematics, according to Comte, are really a branch of 
Logic, part of the furniture, an analysis of the processes, 
of the mind itself. There are, of course, not three stages in 
the "law of the three states" itself, or in any other true logi- 
cal process. Mathematics are wholly positive, i.e. provable 
and based on "an exact view of the true facts." Everything 
that we can call Mathematics, from the first idea of addition, 
is entirely positive. All our definite notions about number, 
form, and movement are strictly positive. But there was a 
time before the birth of Mathematics; and then men's 



LAW OF THE THREE STATES l8l 

ideas about number, form, and movement were in a meta- 
physical (that is, hypothetical) stage, or even in a theological 
stage (that is, they are referred to supposed wills). Infants 
and savages, as the history of language suggests, associate 
changes in number and form with imaginary vital agents. 
A child, learning that two and two make four, thinks of a 
person purposely giving two more things. The counting 
and measuring of savages is formed out of organic move- 
ments. In Mathematics, even in Arithmetic, there is prop- 
erly none but a positive stage. The proper sphere of the 
"law of the three stages" is in the observation of phenomena ; 
and to that Comte carefully limits it. Directly any mind 
attains to real knowledge in such observations, there are no 
further stages to pass. The mind remains in the one stage, 
the positive, or final. 

I shall not follow the Bishop into the analogies to Comte 's 
law, with which his reading furnishes him, or his own sub- 
stitute for it. I fail to see what the analogies or the substi- 
tute have to do with the matter. The "law of the three 
states" professes to be a theory of mental evolution, an ac- 
count of a set of successive processes of thought. The 
Bishop's analogies and his substitute profess to be a classi- 
fication of ideas, a grouping of knowledge. What have these 
in common? The first is a serial record of movement; the 
second is a co-ordination of simultaneous conceptions. One 
might as well find analogies between history and logic; or 
suggest that Kepler's laws arc a history of astronomy. It is 
quite true that all men's knowledge can be looked at from 
different points of view, and may possibly be arranged under 
three groups. But how does that help us to explain the 
genesis of thought in the past? So, I fail to sec how the 
citations from Bacon, the Philosophick Cabbala, or Mr. 
Gladstone, advance the matter in hand. The matter in 



1 82 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

hand is the law of progress in the genesis of science. No one 
of the three authors cited touches on that subject. And is 
it likely that Bacon, Henry More, or any one else who wrote 
before any true science existed and before any social or moral 
science was imagined, could tell us much about the law of 
progress in the genesis of science? So I leave Bacon, the 
Philosophick Cabbala, and Mr. Gladstone, who seems to 
have written something profound on the latter topic. 

With the Bishop's proposed substitute for Comte's law 
I have no wish to quarrel. He says that, instead of a law 
of the three successive stages, we may have a law of three 
simultaneous modes of thought. Certainly we may. And 
the Bishop proposes as his law this : — that "many branches 
of knowledge may be contemplated from three points of view 
— the Theological, the Metaphysical (or Philosophical), and 
the Scientific." With a slight modification of the terms, to 
which the Bishop ought not to demur, I should most heartily 
assent to this. Our general knowledge is Religious, Philo- 
sophical, or Scientific. Religion, Philosophy, Science, is a 
threefold co-ordination of ideas, very much used by Comte : 
the distinctions between the three, and their harmonies he 
is constantly expounding. Positivism, as a system of thought, 
does not mean Science only. It mean Religion — Philos- 
ophy — Science : each in their sphere completing and aid- 
ing the other. So far Comte is entirely at one with the Bishop. 
But this eminently Positivist idea is no sort of substitute for 
the "Law of the three stages." 

As to that the Bishop must try again ; and I cordially in- 
vite him to do so. But he must begin by understanding the 
law which he is to overthrow. The matter in hand has noth- 
ing to do with the belief in Providence, in the sense of a 
"Great First Cause, least understood," as modern men of 
science conceive Providence. The law is this : — that in the 



LAW OF THE THREE STATES 1 83 

infancy of thought, the mind attributes changes in phenomena 
to a will of some kind, which it supposes to be acting, but of 
which it has no real proof ; secondly, that the mind gradually 
passes to attribute the changes to some abstract principle, 
which it formulates without true verification; finally, that 
the mind comes to take an exact view of the true facts of the 
case. These three modes of thought pass gradually into 
each other, are applied to different matters in different de- 
grees, and in the early stages are sometimes only traceable in 
transient prehistoric types. Now what an objector has to do 
is to show — that the sciences have been built up by some 
other definitely marked stages, or have passed through these 
stages in a reverse order, or do not pass through stages at all. 



XIII 



THE SOUL BEFORE AND AFTER DEATH 



This and the following Essays {xiii., xiv., xv.) embodied papers 
and discussions by the writer at the Metaphysical Society. 
They were printed in the "Nineteenth Century" vol. I., 
Numbers 4, 5, 7, and 8 {June, July, September, October, 
1877), wherein may be read the other papers by Mr. R. H. 
Hutton, Professor Huxley, Lord Blachford, Hon. Roden 
Noel, Lord Selborne, Rev. Canon Barry, Mr. W. R. 
Greg, Rev. Baldwin Brown, and Dr. W. G. Ward. 

One of the most eminent members of this Society was once 
moved to say to me in his impressive way, after a few words 
of mine about the human soul, "If I thought as you do on 
these matters, I should go and drown myself forthwith." 
Now, this remark of our illustrious colleague made me re- 
flect ; for, I argued, there must be others who, with him, mis- 
judge the condition of mind in which so many of us find rest, 
imputing to us dreadful ideas, such as we entirely forswear ; 
and I resolved that, whenever our indefatigable Secretary, 
with his remorseless caduceus, might summon me to the bar 
of this tribunal — u Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium versatur 
urna serius ocius sors exitura" — I would try if I could clear 
off a little of that gloom which seems to hang over views that 
so many persist in calling Materialist, and then explain why 
those who maintain what I prefer to call the rational and 
satisfying view of human life do not take refuge in the nearest 
pool. 

184 



THE SOUL 185 

Not that I am so sanguine as to think it possible, in the few 
minutes that the patience of this Society allows me, to argue 
such a mighty question as Man's future, or to do anything 
to advance the issue between the philosophy which rests on 
experience and that which rests on hypothesis. But I have 
often observed that the principal value of our discussions 
seems to lie in the opportunity they afford us of carefully 
laying antagonistic opinions side by side, of more exactly 
determining our own and our opponents' position, and in 
having it forced on us, that our friends do somehow avoid 
that other horn of the dilemma which to us, arguing for them, 
seems so truly inevitable. I shall content myself, therefore, 
with trying only to define our point of view, to guard it from 
one or two consequences with which it is credited, and to 
claim for it one or two corollaries which are often denied it. 
The utmost that can be hoped from discussions of this kind 
is to lead controversialists sometimes to see that there is more 
than the one alternative issue possible to the other side, that 
the question is not simply Aut Ccesar, aut nullus, that there 
is something else to choose beside Mahomet's alternative, 
"the Koran or Death." 

I have said that I shall make no attempt to establish so big 
a proposition as that from which I start, that our real know- 
ledge rests upon experience ; and much less shall I attempt 
to disprove so big a hypothesis as that which I reject, that 
there are channels to knowledge of far higher value in our 
aspirations. I make a courteous salute to the hypotheses — 
non ragioniam di lor, non guarda, ma passa — but I declare 
for the philosophy of experience in all its relations, and I shall 
seek to show that in itself it is in this, as in other mailers, 
morally sufficient, that il leaves no voids in human life, and 
that the moral and religious sequelae which have been assigned 
to it have no real existence. The issue is between the method 



1 86 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of looking on man simply as man, and the method of looking 
on man as man plus a heterogeneous entity. I shall not deny 
the existence of such heterogeneous entity, and I shall not 
undertake to prove that man is nothing but man. But as- 
suming that he is so limited, and assuming that the hetero- 
geneous entity is as perfectly extra-human as it professes 
to be, I say that human nature is adequately equipped on 
human and natural grounds without the disparate nonde- 
script. 

I am careful to describe the method I am defending as that 
which looks on man as man, and I repudiate the various labels, 
such as materialist, physical, unspiritual methods, and the 
like, which are used as equivalent for the rational or positive 
method of treating man. The method of treating man as 
man insists, at least as much as any other method, that man 
has a moral, emotional, religious life, different in kind from 
his material and practical life, but perfectly co-ordinate with 
that physical life, and to be studied on similar scientific 
methods. The spiritual sympathies of man are undoubtedly 
the highest part of human nature ; and our method condemns 
as loudly as any system can physical explanations of spiritual 
life. We claim the right to use the terms "soul," "spiritual," 
and the like, in their natural meaning. 

In the same way, we think that there are theories which 
are justly called "Materialist," that there are physical con- 
ceptions of human nature which are truly dangerous to mo- 
rality, to goodness, and religion. It is sometimes thought 
to be a sufficient proof of the reality of this heterogeneous 
entity of the soul, that otherwise we must assume the most 
spiritual emotions of man to be a secretion of cerebral matter, 
and that, whatever the difficulties of conceiving the union 
of Soul and Body, it is something less difficult than the con- 
ceiving that the nerves think, or the tissues love. We re- 



THE SOUL 187 

pudiate such language as much as any one can, but there 
is another alternative. It is possible to invest with the highest 
dignity the spiritual life of mankind by treating it as an ulti- 
mate fact, without trying to find an explanation for it either 
in a perfectly unthinkable hypothesis or in an irrational and 
debasing physicism. 

We certainly do reject, as earnestly as any school can, that 
which is most fairly called Materialism, and we will second 
every word of those who cry out that civilisation is in danger 
if the workings of the human spirit are to become questions 
of physiology, and if death is the end of a man, as it is the 
end of a sparrow. We not only assent to such protests, but 
we see very pressing need for making them. It is a cor- 
rupting doctrine to open a brain, and to tell us that devotion 
is a definite molecular change in this and that convolution 
of grey pulp, and that if man is the first of living animals, 
he passes away after a short space like the beasts that perish. 
And all doctrines, more or less, do tend to this, which offer 
physical theories as explaining moral phenomena, which 
deny man a spiritual in addition to a moral nature, which 
limit his moral life to the span of his bodily organism, and 
which have no place for "religion" in the proper sense of the 
word. 

Does it seem to any one a paradox to hold such language, 
and yet to have nothing to say about the immaterial entity 
which many assume to be the cause behind this spiritual life? 
The answer is that we occupy ourselves with this spiritual 
life as an ultimate fact, and consistently with the whole of 
our philosophy, we decline to assign a cause at all. We argue 3 
with the theologians, that it is ridiculous to go to the scalpel 
for an adequate account of a mother's love; but we do not 
think it is explained (any more than it is by the scalpel) by 
a hypothesis for which not only is there no shadow of evidence, 



1 88 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

but which cannot even be stated in philosophic language. 
We find the same absurdity in the notion that maternal love 
is a branch of the anatomy of the mammcE, and in the notion 
that the phenomena of lactation are produced by an imma- 
terial entity. Both are forms of the same fallacy, that of 
trying to reach ultimate causes instead of studying laws. 
We certainly do find that maternal love and lactation have 
close correspondences, and that both are phenomena of cer- 
tain female organisms. And we say that to talk of maternal 
love being exhibited by an entity which not only is not a 
female organism, but is not an organism at all, is to use lan- 
guage which to us, at least, is unintelligible. 

The philosophy which treats man as man simply affirms 
that man loves, thinks, acts, not that the ganglia, or the 
sinuses, or any organ of man, loves and thinks and acts. 
The thoughts, aspirations, and impulses are not secretions, 
and the science which teaches us about secretions will not 
teach us much about them; our thoughts, aspirations, and 
impulses are faculties of a man. Now, as a man implies a 
body, so we say these also imply a body. And to talk to us 
about a bodyless being thinking and loving is simply to talk 
about the thoughts and feelings of Nothing. 

As I began by saying, I am not presuming to offer any 
argument for this fundamental position. I am well aware 
that each one determines it according to the whole bias of 
his intellectual and moral nature. I am only trying to state 
our side of the question, and then to suggest that, supposing 
it, there is ample scope for the spiritual life, for moral re- 
sponsibility, for the world beyond the grave, its hopes and 
its duties; which remain to us perfectly real without the 
unintelligible hypothesis. However much men cling to the 
hypothesis from old association, if they reflect, they will find 
that they do not use it to give them any actual knowledge 






THE SOUL 189 

about man's spiritual life ; that all their methodical reasoning 
about the moral world is exclusively based on the phenomena 
of this world, and not on the phenomena of any other world 
(if any there be). And thus the absence of the hypothesis 
altogether does not make the serious difference which theo- 
logians suppose. 

To follow out this into particulars: Analysis of human 
nature shows us man with a great variety of faculties; his 
moral powers are just as distinguishable as his intellectual 
powers; and both are mentally separable from his physical 
powers. Moral and mental laws are reduced to something 
like system by moral and mental science, with or without the 
theological hypothesis. The most extreme form of mate- 
rialism does not dispute that moral and mental science is for 
logical purposes something more than physical science. So, 
the most extreme form of spiritualism gets its mental and 
moral science by observation and argument from phenomena ; 
it does not, or it does not any longer, build such science by 
abstract deduction from any proposition as to an immaterial 
entity. 

There have been, in ages past, attempts to do this. Plato, 
for instance, attempted to found, not only his mental and 
moral philosophy, but his general philosophy of the universe, 
by deduction from a mere hypothesis. He had the courage 
of his opinions, and he imagined immaterial entities, the 
ideas, of things inorganic, as much as organic. He thought 
that a statue or a chair were what they are, by virtue of an 
immaterial entity which gave them form. The hypothesis 
did not add much to the art of statuary or to that of the car- 
penter; nor, to do him justice, did Plato look for much prac- 
tical result in these spheres. 

One form of the doctrine alone survives, — that man is 
what he is by virtue of an immaterial entity temporarily 



190 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

indwelling in his body. But, though the hypothesis survives, 
it is in no sense any longer the basis of the science of human 
nature with any school. No school is now content to sit 
in its study and evolve its knowledge of the moral qualities 
of man out of abstract deductions from the conception of an 
immaterial entity. All without exception profess to get their 
knowledge of the moral qualities by observing the qualities 
which men actually do exhibit or have exhibited. And those 
who are persuaded that man has, over and above his man's 
nature, an immaterial entity, find themselves discussing the 
laws of thought and of character on a common ground with 
those who regard man as man, — i.e., who regard man's 
nature as capable of being referred to a homogeneous system 
of law. Spiritualists and materialists, however much they 
may differ in their explanations of moral phenomena, de- 
scribe their relations in the same language, the language of 
law, not of illuminism. 

Those, therefore, who dispense with a transcendental ex- 
planation are just as free as those who maintain it, to handle 
the spiritual and religious phenomena of human nature, 
treating them simply as phenomena. No one has ever sug- 
gested that the former philosophy is not quite as well entitled 
to analyse the intellectual faculties of man as the stoutest 
believer in the immaterial entity. It would raise a smile now- 
a-days to hear it said that such an one must be incompetent 
to treat of the canons of inductive reasoning, because he was 
unorthodox as to the immortality of the Soul. And if, not- 
withstanding this unorthodoxy, he is thought competent to 
investigate the laws of thought, why not the moral laws, 
the sentiments, and the emotions? 

As a fact, every moral faculty of man is recognised by him 
just as much as by any transcendentalist. He does not limit 
himself, any more than the theologian does, to mere morality. 



THE SOUL 191 

He is fully alive to the spiritual emotions in all their depth, 
purity, and beauty. He recognises in man the yearning for 
a power without to venerate, a love for the author of his chief 
good, the need for sympathy with something greater than 
himself. All these are positive facts which rest on observa- 
tion, quite apart from any explanation of the hypothetical 
cause of these tendencies in man. There, at any rate, the 
scientific observer finds them; and he is at liberty to give 
them quite as high a place in his scheme of human nature as 
the most complete theologian. He may possibly give them 
a far higher place, and bind them far more truly into the 
entire tissue of his whole view of life, because they are built 
up for him on precisely the same ground of experience as 
all the rest of his knowledge, and have no element at all 
heterogeneous from the rest of life. 

With the language of spiritual emotion he is perfectly in 
unison. The spirit of devotion, of spiritual communion with 
an ever-present power, of sympathy and fellowship with the 
living world, of awe and submission towards the material 
world, the sense of adoration, love, resignation, mystery, 
are at least as potent with the one system as with the other. 
He can share the religious emotion of every age, and can enter 
into the language of every truly religious heart. For myself, 
I believe that this is only done on a complete as well as a real 
basis in the religion of Humanity, but I do not confine my 
present argument to that ground. I venture to believe that 
this spirit is truly shared by all, whatever their hypothesis 
about the human soul, who treat these highest emotions of 
man's nature as facts of primary value, and who have any 
intelligible theory whereby these emotions can be aroused. 

All positive methods of treating man of a comprehensive 
kind adopt to the full all that has ever been said about the 
dignity of man's moral and spiritual life, and treat these 



192 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

phenomena as distinct from the intellectual and the physical 
life. These methods also recognise the unity of consciousness, 
the facts of conscience, the sense of identity, and the longing 
for perpetuation of that identity. They decline to explain 
these phenomena by the popular hypotheses ; but they neither 
deny their existence, nor lessen their importance. Man, 
they argue, has a complex existence, made up of the phenom- 
ena of his physical organs, of his intellectual powers, of his 
moral faculties, crowned and harmonised ultimately by his 
religious sympathies, — love, gratitude, veneration, sub- 
mission, towards the dominant force by which he finds him- 
self surrounded. 

I use words which are not limited to a particular philosophy 
or religion — I do not confine my language to the philosophy 
or religion of Comte — for this same conception of man is 
common to many philosophies and many religions. It 
characterises such systems as those of Spinoza or Shelley, 
as much as those of Confucius or Buddha. In a word, the 
reality and the supremacy of the spiritual life have never been 
carried further than by men who have departed most widely 
from the popular hypotheses of the immaterial entity. 

Many of these men, no doubt, have indulged in hypotheses 
of their own quite as arbitrary as those of theology. It is 
characteristic of the positive thought of our age that it stands 
upon a firmer basis. Though not confounding the moral 
facts with the physical, and establishing a moral and mental 
science distinct from biological science, it will never lose sight 
of the correspondence and consensus between all sides of 
human life. Led by an enormous and complete array of 
evidences, it associates every fact of thought or of emotion 
with a fact of physiology, with molecular change in the body. 
Without pretending to explain the first by the second, it 
denies that the first can be explained without the second. 



THE SOUL 193 

Thought and emotion are simply powers of a material or- 
ganism, and to talk to us of thought and emotion as powers 
of an immaterial entity, is to talk of the Function of Nothing. 
But no philosophy is so careful as is this to keep always in 
view the organic correspondence of man's faculties, har- 
monised by his finest sympathies. We call this consensus his 
Soul. 

Nothing is more idle than a discussion about words. But 
when some deny the use of the word "soul " to those who 
mean by it this consensus, and not any immaterial entity, we 
may remind them that our use of the word agrees with its 
etymology and its history. It is the mode in which it is used 
in the Bible, the well-spring of our true English speech. 
It may, indeed, be contended that there is no instance in the 
Bible in which Soul does mean an immaterial entity, the 
idea not having been familiar to any of the writers, with the 
doubtful exception of St. Paul. But without entering upon 
Biblical philology, it may be said that for one passage in the 
Bible in which the word "soul" can be forced to bear the 
meaning of immaterial entity, there are ten texts in which 
it cannot possibly refer to anything but breath, life, moral 
sense, or spiritual emotion. When the Psalmist says, " De- 
liver my soul from death," "Heal my soul, for I have sinned," 
"My soul is cast down within me," "Return unto my rest, 
O my soul," he means by "soul" what we mean, — the con- 
scious unity of our being culminating in its religious emotions ; 
and until we find some English word that better expresses 
this idea, we shall continue to use the phraseology of David. 

It is not merely that we are denied the language of religion, 
but we sometimes find attempts to exclude us from the thing. 
There are some who say that worship, spiritual life, and that 
exaltation of the sentiments which we call devotion, have no 
possible meaning unless applied to the special theology of the 



194 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

particular speaker. A little attention to history, a single 
reflection on religion as a whole, suffice to show the hollow- 
ness of this assumption. If devotion means the surrender 
of self to an adored Power, there has been devotion in creeds 
with many gods, with one God, with no gods; if spiritual 
life means the cultivation of this temper towards moral puri- 
fication, there was spiritual life long before the notion of an 
immaterial entity inside the human being was excogitated; 
and as to worship, men have worshipped, with intense and 
overwhelming passion, all kinds of objects, organic and in- 
organic, material and spiritual, abstract ideas as well as 
visible forces. Is it implied that Confucius, and the count- 
less millions who have followed him, had no idea of religion, 
as it is certain that they had none of theology ; that Buddha 
and the Buddhists were incapable of spiritual emotion ; that 
the Fire-worshippers and the Sun-worshippers never prac- 
tised worship; that the pantheists and the humanists, from 
Marcus Aurelius to Fichte, had the springs of spiritual life 
dried up in them for want of an Old or New Testament? 
If this is intended, one can only wonder at the power of a self- 
complacent conformity to close men's eyes to the native 
dignity of man. Religion and its elements in emotion — 
attachment, veneration, love — are as old exactly as human 
nature. They moved the first men, and the first women. 
They have found a hundred objects to inspire them, and 
have bowed to a great variety of powers. They were in full 
force long before Theology was, and before the rise of Chris- 
tianity ; and it would be strange indeed if they should cease 
with the decline of either. It is not the emotional elements 
of Religion which fail us. For these, with the growing good- 
ness of mankind, are gaining in purity and strength. Rather, 
it is the intellectual elements of Religion which are con- 
spicuously at fault. We need to-day, not the faculty of 



THE SOUL 



195 



worship (that is ever fresh in the heart), but a clearer vision 
of the power we should worship. Nay, it is not we who are 
borrowing the privileges of theology: rather it is theology 
which seeks to appropriate to itself the most universal 
privilege of man. 



XIV 
HEAVEN 

See Introductory Note to Essay XIII 

How many men and women continue to give a mechanical 
acquiescence to the creeds, long after they have parted with 
all definite theology, out of mere clinging to some hope of a 
future life, in however dim and inarticulate a way ! And 
how many, whose own faith is too evanescent to be put into 
words, profess a sovereign pity for the practical philosophy 
wherein there is no place for their particular yearning for a 
Heaven to come ! They imagine themselves to be, by virtue 
of this very yearning, beings of a superior order, and, as if 
they inhabited some higher zone amidst the clouds, they flout 
sober thought as it toils in the plain below; they counsel 
it to drown itself in sheer despair or take to evil living ; they 
rebuke it with some sonorous household word from the Bible 
or the poets — "Eat, drink, for to-morrow ye die" — "Were 
it not better not to be?" And they assume the question 
closed, when they have murmured triumphantly, "Behind 
the veil, behind the veil." 

They are right, and they are wrong: right to cling to a 
hope of something that shall endure beyond the grave; 
wrong in their rebukes to men who in a different spirit cling 
to this hope as earnestly as they. We too turn our thoughts 
to that which is behind the veil. We strive to pierce its 
secret with eyes, we trust, as eager and as fearless ; and even 
it may be more patient in searching for the realities beyond 

196 



HEAVEN 197 

the gloom. That which shall come after is no less solemn 
to us than to you. We ask you, therefore, What do you 
know of it? Tell us; we will tell you what we hope. Let 
us reason together in sober and precise prose. 

Why should this great end, staring at all of us along the 
vista of each human life, be for ever a matter for dithyrambic 
hypotheses and evasive tropes? What in the language of 
clear sense does any one of us hope for after death: what 
precise kind of life, and on what grounds ? It is too great a 
thing to be trusted to poetic ejaculations, to be made a field 
for Pharisaic scorn. At least be it acknowledged that a 
man may think of the Soul and of Death and of Future Life 
in ways strictly positive (that is, without ever quitting the 
region of evidence), and yet may make the world beyond the 
grave the centre to himself of moral life. He will give the 
spiritual life a place as high, and will dwell upon the promises 
of that which is after death as confidently as the believers in 
a celestial resurrection. And he can do this without trust- 
ing his all to a perhaps so vague that a spasm of doubt can 
wreck it, but trusting rather to a mass of solid knowledge, 
which no man of any school denies to be true so far as it goes. 



There ought to be no misunderstanding at the outset as to 
what we who trust in positive methods mean by the word 
"Soul," or by the words "spiritual," " materialist," and 
" future life." We certainly would use that ancient and 
beautiful word "Soul," provided there be no misconception 
involved in its use. We assert as fully as any theologian the 
supreme importance of spiritual life. We agree with the 
theologians thai there is current a great deal of real material- 
ism, deadening to our higher feeling. And we deplore the 



198 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

too common indifference to the world beyond the grave. 
And yet we find the centre of our religion and our philoso- 
phy in Man and Man's Earth. 

To follow out this use of old words, and to see that there 
is no paradox in thus using them, we must go back a little 
to general principles. The matter turns altogether upon 
habits of thought. What seems to you so shocking will often 
seem to us so ennobling, and what seems to us flimsy will 
often seem to you sublime, simply because our minds have 
been trained in different logical methods ; and hence you will 
call that a beautiful truth which strikes us as nothing but 
a random guess. It is idle, of course, to dispute about our 
respective logical methods, or to pit this habit of mind in a 
combat with that. But we may understand each other 
better if we can agree to follow out the moral and religious 
temper, and learn that it is quite compatible with this or that 
mental procedure. It may teach us again that ancient truth, 
how much human nature there is in men; what fellowship 
there is in our common aspirations and moral forces; how 
we all live the same spiritual life; whilst the philosophies 
are but the ceaseless toil of the intellect seeking again and 
again to explain more clearly that spiritual life, and to fur- 
nish it with reasons for the faith that is in it. 

This would be no place to expound or to defend the posi- 
tive method of thought. The question before us is simply, 
if this positive method has a place in the spiritual world or has 
anything to say about a future beyond the grave. Suffice 
it that we mean by the positive method of thought (and we 
will now use the term in a sense not limited to the social 
construction of Comte) that method which would base life 
and conduct, as well as knowledge, upon such evidence as 
can be referred to logical canons of proof, which would place 
all that occupies man in a homogeneous system of law. On 



HEAVEN 199 

the other hand, this method turns aside from hypotheses not 
to be tested by any known logical canon familiar to science, 
whether the hypothesis claim support from intuition, aspira- 
tion, or general plausibility. And again, this method turns 
aside from ideal standards which avow themselves to be law- 
less, which profess to transcend the field of law. We say, 
life and conduct shall stand for us wholly on a basis of law, 
and must rest entirely in that region of science (not physical 
but moral and social science) where we are free to use our 
intelligence in the methods known to us as intelligible logic, 
methods which the intellect can analyse. When you con- 
front us with hypotheses, however sublime and however 
affecting, if they cannot be stated in terms of the rest of our 
knowledge, if they are disparate to that world of sequence 
and sensation which to us is the ultimate base of all our real 
knowledge, then we shake our heads and turn aside. I say, 
turn aside ; and I do not say, dispute. We cannot disprove 
the suggestion that there are higher channels to knowledge 
in our aspirations or our presentiments, as there might be 
in our dreams by night as well as by day; we courteously 
salute the hypotheses, as we might love our pleasant dreams ; 
we seek to prove no negatives. 

We do not pretend there are no mysteries, we do not frown 
on the poetic splendours of the fancy. There is a world of 
beauty and of pathos in the vast aether of the Unknown in 
which this solid ball hangs like a speck. Let all who list, 
who have true imagination and are not merely paltering 
with a loose fancy, let them indulge their gift, and tell us what 
their soaring has unfolded. Only let us not waste life in 
crude dreaming, or loosen the knees of action. For life 
and conduct, and the great emotions which read on life and 
conduct, we can place nowhere but in the same sphere of 
knowledge, under the same canons of proof, to which we 



200 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

entrust all parts of our life. We will ask the same philosophy 
which teaches us the lessons of civilisation to guide our lives 
as responsible men ; and we go again to the same philosophy 
which orders our lives to explain to us the lessons of death. 
We crave to have the supreme hours of our existence lighted 
up by thoughts and motives such as we can measure beside 
the common acts of our daily existence, so that each hour of 
our life up to the grave may be linked to the life beyond the 
grave as one continuous whole, "bound each to each by 
natural piety." And so, wasting no sighs over the incom- 
mensurable possibilities of the fancy, we will march on with 
a firm step till we knock at the Gates of Death; bearing 
always the same human temper, in the same reasonable 
beliefs, and with the same earthly hopes of prolonged activity 
amongst our fellows, with which we set out gaily in the morn- 
ing of life. 

When we come to the problem of the human Soul, we simply 
treat man as man, and we study him in accordance with 
our human experience. Man is a marvellous and complex 
being, we may fairly say of complexity past any hope of final 
analysis of ours, fearfully and wonderfully made to the point 
of being mysterious. But incredible progress has been won 
in reading this complexity, in reducing this mystery to order. 
Who can say that man shall ever be anything but an object 
of awe and of unfathomable pondering to himself ? Yet he 
would be false to all that is great in him, if he decried what 
he already has achieved towards self-knowledge. Man has 
probed his own corporeal and animal life, and is each day 
arranging it in more accurate adjustment with the immense 
procession of animal life around him. He has grouped the 
intellectual powers, he has traced to their relations the func- 
tions of mind, and ordered the laws of thought into a logic 
of a regular kind. He has analysed and grouped the capac- 



HEAVEN 201 

ities of action, the moral faculties, the instincts and emo- 
tions. And not only is the analysis of these tolerably clear, 
but the associations and correlations of each with the other 
are fairly made manifest. At the lowest, we are all assured 
that every single faculty of man is capable of scientific study. 
Philosophy simply means, that every part of human nature 
acts upon a method, and does not act chaotically, inscrutably, 
or in mere caprice. 

But then we find throughout man's knowledge of himself 
signs of a common type. There is organic unity in the whole. 
These laws of the separate functions, of body, mind, or feel- 
ing, have visible relations to each other, are inextricably 
woven in with each other, act and react, depend and inter- 
depend one on the other. There is no such thing as an iso- 
lated phenomenon, nothing sui generis, in our entire scrutiny 
of human nature. Whatever the complexities of it, there is 
through the whole the solidarity of a single unit. Touch the 
smallest fibre of the corporeal man, and in some infinitesimal 
way we may watch the effect in the moral man, and we may 
trace this effect up into the highest pinnacles of the spiritual 
life. On the other hand, when we rouse chords of the most 
glorious ecstasy of the soul, we may see the vibration of them 
visibly thrilling upon the skin. The very brutes about us 
can perceive the emotion. Suppose a martyr nerved to the 
last sacrifice, or a saint in the act of relieving a sufferer, the 
sacred passion within them is stamped in the eye, or plays 
about the mouth, with a connection as visible as when we 
see a muscle acting on a bone, or the brain affected by the 
supply of blood. 

Thus from the summit of spiritual life to the base of cor- 
poreal life, whether we pass up or clown the gamut of human 
forces, there runs one organic correlation and sympathy 
of parts. Man is one, however compound. Fire his con- 



202 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

science, and he blushes. Check his circulation, and he 
thinks wildly, or thinks not at all. Impair his secretions, 
and moral sense is dulled, discoloured, or depraved; his 
aspirations flag, his hope, love, faith reel. Impair them still 
more, and he becomes a brute. A cup of drink degrades his 
moral nature below that of a swine. Again, a violent emo- 
tion of pity or horror makes him vomit. A lancet will re- 
store him from delirium to clear thought. Excess of thought 
will waste his sinews. Excess of muscular exercise will deaden 
thought. An emotion will double the strength of his muscles. 
And at last the prick of a needle or a grain of mineral will in 
an instant lay to rest for ever his body and its unity, and all 
the spontaneous activities of intelligence, feeling, and action, 
with which that compound organism was charged. 

These are the obvious and ancient observations about the 
human organism. But modern philosophy and science have 
carried these hints into complete explanations. By a vast 
accumulation of proof positive thought at last has established 
a distinct correspondence between every process of thought 
or of feeling and some corporeal phenomenon. Even when 
we cannot explain the precise relation, we can show that 
definite correlations exist. To positive methods, every fact 
of thinking reveals itself as having functional relation with 
molecular change. Every fact of will or of feeling is in 
similar relation with kindred molecular facts. And all these 
facts again have some relation to each other. 

Hence we have established an organic correspondence 
in all manifestations of human life. To think implies a cor- 
responding adjustment of molecular activity. To feel emo- 
tion implies nervous organs of feeling. To will implies vital 
cerebral hemispheres. Observation, reflection, memory, 
imagination, judgment, have all been analysed out, till they 
stand forth as functions of living organs in given conditions 



HEAVEN 203 

of the organism, that is in a particular environment. The 
whole range of man's powers, from the finest spiritual sen- 
sibility down to a mere automatic contraction, falls into one 
coherent scheme : being all the multiform functions of a 
living organism in presence of its encircling conditions. 

But complex as it is, there is no confusion in this whole 
when conceived by positive methods. No rational thinker 
now pretends that imagination is simply the vibration of a 
particular fibre. No man can explain volition by purely 
anatomical study. Whilst keeping in view the due relations 
between moral and corporeal facts, we distinguish moral 
from biologic facts, moral science from biology. Moral 
science is based upon biological science; but it is not com- 
prised in it : it has its own special facts and its own special 
methods, though always remaining within the sphere of law. 
Just so, the mechanism of the body is based upon mechanics, 
would be unintelligible but for mechanics, but could not be 
explained by mechanics alone, or by anything but a complete 
anatomy and biology. To explain the activity of the intel- 
lect as included in the activity of the body, is as idle as to 
explain the activity of the body as included in the motion 
of solid bodies. 

And it is equally idle to explain the activity of the will, 
or the emotions, as included in the theory of the intellect. 
All the spheres of human life are logically separable, though 
they are organically interdependent. Now the combined 
acitvity of the human powers organised around the highest 
of them we call the Soul. The combination of intellectual 
and moral energy which is the source of Religion, we call 
the spiritual life. The explaining the spiritual side of life 
by physical instead of moral and spiritual reasoning, we 
call materialism. 

The consensus of the human faculties, which we call the 



204 



PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 



Soul, comprises all sides of human nature according to one 
homogeneous theory. But the intuitional methods ask 
us to insert into the midst of this harmonious system of parts, 
as an underlying explanation of it, an indescribable entity; 
and to this hypothesis, since the days of Descartes (or pos- 
sibly of Aquinas), the fine old word Soul has been usually 
restricted. How and when this entity ever got into the or- 
ganism, how it abides in it, what are its relations to it, how 
it acts on it, why and when it goes out of it — all is mystery. 
We ask for some evidence of the existence of any such entity ; 
the answer is, we must imagine it in order to explain the 
organism. We ask what are its methods, its laws, its affini- 
ties ; we are told that it simply has none, or none knowable. 
We ask for some description of it, of its course of develop- 
ment, for some single fact about it, stateable in terms of the 
rest of our knowledge ; the reply is — mystery, absence of 
everything so stateable or cognisable, a line of poetry, or 
an ejaculation. It has no place, no matter, no modes, 
neither evolution nor decay; it is without body, parts, or 
passions : a spiritual essence, incommensurable, incom- 
parable, indescribable. Yet with all this, it is, we are told, 
an entity, the most real and perfect of all entities short of the 
divine. Nowadays they tell us that it is an emanation of the 
World-principle. 

If we ask why we are to assume the existence of something 
of which we have certainly no direct evidence, and which 
is so wrapped in mystery that for practical purposes it becomes 
a nonentity, we are told that we need to conceive it, because 
a mere organism cannot act as we see the human organism 
act. Why not ? They say there must be a principle within 
as the cause of this life. But what do we gain by supposing 
a " principle"? The "principle" only adds a fresh diffi- 
culty. Why should a " principle," or an entity, be more 






HEAVEN 205 

capable of possessing these marvellous human powers than 
the human organism? Besides, we shall have to imagine 
a "principle" to explain not only why a man can feel affec- 
tion, but also why a dog can feel affection. If a mother can- 
not love her child — merely qua human organism — unless 
her love be a manifestation of an eternal soul, how can a 
cat love her kittens — merely qua feline organism — with- 
out an immaterial principle, or soul? Nay, we shall have 
to go on to invent a principle to account for a tree growing, 
or a thunderstorm roaring, and for every .force of nature. 
Now this very supposition was made in a way by the Greeks, 
and to some extent by Aquinas, the authors of the vast sub- 
structure of anima underlying all nature, of which our human 
Soul is the fragment that alone survives. 

One by one the steps in this series of hypotheses have faded 
away. Greek and mediaeval philosophy imagined that every 
activity resulted not from the body which exhibited the ac- 
tivity, but from some mysterious entity inside it. If marble 
was hard, it had a "form" informing its hardness; if a blade 
of grass sprang up, it had a vegetative spirit mysteriously 
impelling it ; if a dog obeyed his master, it had an animal 
spirit mysteriously controlling its organs. The mediaeval 
physicists, as Moliere reminds us, thought that opium in- 
duced sleep quia est in eo virtus dormitiva. Nothing was al- 
lowed to act as it did by its own force or vitality. In every 
explanation of science we were told to postulate and inter- 
calary hypothesis. Of this huge mountain of figment, the 
notion of man's immaterial Soul is the one feeble residuum. 

Orthodoxy has so long been accustomed to take itself for 

granted, that we are apt to forget how very short a period 

of human history this sublimated essence has been current. 

From Plato to Hegel the idea has been continually taking 

shapes. There is not a trace of it in the Bible in its 



206 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

present sense, and nothing in the least akin to it in the Old 
Testament. Till the time of Aquinas theories of a material 
soul, as a sort of gas, were never eliminated ; and until the 
time of Descartes, our present ideas of the antithesis of Soul 
and Body were never clearly defined. Thus the Bible, the 
Fathers, and the Mediaeval Church, as was natural when 
philosophy was in a state of flux, all represented the Soul in 
very different ways ; and none of these ways were those of a 
modern divine. It is a curious instance of the power of 
words that the practical weight of the popular religion is 
now hung on a metaphysical hypothesis, which itself has 
been in vogue for only a few centuries in the history of spec- 
ulation, and which is now become to those trained in positive 
habits of thought a mere juggle of ideas. 

It is true that in this age, or rather in this country, we 
seldom hear the stupid and brutal materialism which pre- 
tends that the subtleties of thought and emotion are simply 
this or that agitation in some grey matter, to be ultimately 
expounded by the professors of grey matter. But this is 
hardly the danger which besets our time. The true ma- 
terialism to fear is the prevailing tendency of anatomical 
habits of mind or specialist habits of mind to intrude into 
the regions of religion and philosophy. A man whose whole 
thoughts are absorbed in cutting up dead monkeys and live 
frogs has no more business to dogmatise about religion than 
a mere chemist to improvise a zoology. Biological reasoning 
about spiritual things is as presumptuous as the theories 
of an electrician about the organic facts of nervous life. We 
live amidst a constant and growing usurpation of science in 
the province of philosophy; of biology in the province of 
sociology; of physics in that of religion. Nothing is more 
common than the use of the term science, when what is 
meant is merely physical and physiological science, not social 



HEAVEN 207 

and moral science. The arrogant attempt to dispose of the 
deepest moral truths of human nature on a bare physical 
or physiological basis is almost enough to justify the insur- 
rection of some impatient theologians against science itself. 
It is impossible not to sympathise with men who at least are 
defending the paramount claim of the moral laws and the 
religious sentiment. 

The solution of the dispute is that physicists and the- 
ologians have each hold of a partial truth. As the latter 
insist, the grand problems of man's life must be ever referred 
to moral and social argument ; but then, as the physicists 
insist, this moral and social argument can only be built up 
on a physical and physiological foundation. The physical 
part of science is indeed merely the vestibule to social, and 
thence to moral science ; and of science in all its forms the 
philosophy of religion alone holds the key. The true Ma- 
terialism lies in the habit of scientific specialists to neglect 
all philosophical and religious synthesis. It is marked by 
the ignoring of religion, the passing by on the other side, 
and shutting the eyes to the spiritual history of mankind. 
The spiritual traditions of mankind, a supreme philosophy 
of life and thought, religion in the proper sense of the word, 
all these have to play a larger and ever larger part in human 
knowledge; not as we arc so often told, and so commonly is 
assumed, a waning and vanishing part. And it is in this 
field; the field which has so long been abandoned to theology, 
that Positivism is prepared to meet the theologians. We 
at any rate do not ask them to submit religion to the test 
of the scalpel or the electric battery. It is true that we base 
our theory of society and our theory of morals, and hence 
our religion itself, on a curriculum of physical, and especially 
of biological science. It is true that our moral and social 
science is but a prolongation of these other sciences. But 



208 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

then we insist that it is not science in the narrow sense which 
can order our beliefs, but Philosophy; not science which 
can solve our problems of life, but Religion. And religion 
demands for its understanding the religious mind and the 
spiritual experience. 



II 



The rational view of the Soul (as we have seen) would 
remove us as far from a cynical materialism as from a fan- 
tastic spiritualism. It restores to their true supremacy in 
human life those religious emotions which materialism for- 
gets ; whilst it frees us from the idle figment which spiritual- 
ism would foist upon human nature. 

We entirely agree with the theologians that our age is 
beset with a grievous danger of materialism. There is a 
school of teachers abroad, and they have found an echo here, 
who dream that victorious vivisection will ultimately win 
them anatomical solutions of man's moral and spiritual mys- 
teries. Such unholy nightmares, it is true, are not likely 
to beguile many minds in a country like this, where social 
and moral problems are still in their natural ascendant. 
But there is a subtler kind of materialism of which the dangers 
are real. It does not indeed put forth the bestial sophism, 
that the apex of philosophy is to be won by improved micro- 
scopes and new batteries. But then it has nothing to say 
about the spiritual life of man ; it has no particular religion ; 
it ignores the Soul. It fills the air with paeans to science; 
it is never weary of vaunting the scientific methods, the scien- 
tific triumphs. But it always means physical, not moral 
science ; intellectual, not religious conquests. 

It shirks the question of questions — to what human end 
is this knowledge — how shall man thereby order his life 



HEAVEN 



209 



as a whole — where is he to find the object of his yearnings 
of spirit? Of the spiritual history of mankind it knows as 
little, and thinks as little, as of any crazy sort of Asiatic devil- 
worship. At the spiritual aspirations of the men and women 
around us, ill at ease for want of some answer, it stares 
blankly, as it does at some spirit-rapping epidemic. "What 
is that to us ! — see thou to that" — is all that it can answer 
when men ask it for a religion. Its formula is that it is of 
the religion of all sensible men, the religion which all sensible 
men never tell. With a smile or a shrug of the shoulders 
it passes by into the whirring workshops of science (that is, 
the physical prelude of science) ; and it leaves the spiritual 
life of the Soul to the spiritualists, theological or nonsensical 
as the case may be, wishing them both in heaven. This is 
the materialism to fear. 

The theologians and the vast sober mass of serious men 
and women who want simply to live truly are quite right when 
they shun and fear a school that is so eager about cosmology 
and biology, whilst it leaves morality and religion to take care 
of themselves. And yet they know all the while that before 
the advancing line of positive thought they are fighting a for- 
lorn hope ; and they see their own line daily more and more 
demoralised by the consciousness that they have no rational 
plan of campaign. They know that their own account of 
the Soul, of the spiritual life, of Providence, of Heaven, is 
daily shifting, is growing more vague, more inconsistent, 
more various. They hurry wildly from one untenable posi- 
tion to another, like a routed and disorganised army. 

In a religious discussion years ago I once asked one of the 
Broad Church, a disciple of one of its eminent founders, 
what be understood by the third Person of the Trinity; 
and he said doubtfully "that he fancied there was a sort of a 
something." Since those days the process of disintegration 



210 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

and vaporisation of belief has gone on rapidly; and now 
very religious minds, and men who think themselves to be 
religious, are ready to apply this "sort of a something" to 
all the verities in turn. They half hope that there is "a 
sort of a something" fluttering about, or inside, their human 
frames, that there may turn out to be a "something" some- 
where after Death, and that there must be a sort of a some- 
body or (as the theology of Culture will have it) a sort of a 
something controlling and comprehending human life. 
But the more thoughtful spirits, not being professionally 
engaged in a doctrine, mostly limit themselves to a pious hope 
that there may be something in it, and that we shall know 
some day what it is. 

Now theologians and religious people unattached must 
know that this will never serve — that this is paltering with 
the greatest of all things. What then is the only solution 
which can ultimately satisfy both the devotees of science and 
the believers in religion? Surely but this, to make religion 
scientific by placing religion under the methods of science. 
Let Science come to see that religion, morality, life, are 
within its field, or rather are the main part of its field. Let 
Religion come to see that it can be nothing but a prolonga- 
tion of science, a rational and homogeneous result of cos- 
mology and biology, not a matter of fantastic guessing. 
Then there will be no true science which does not aim at, 
and is not guided by, systematic religion. And there will 
be no religion which pretends to any other basis but positive 
knowledge and scientific logic. But for this science must 
consent to add spiritual phenomena to its curriculum, and 
religion must consent to give up its vapid figments. 

Positivism in dealing with the Soul discards the exploded 
errors of the materialists and the spiritualists alike. On 
the one hand, it not only admits into its studies the spiritual 



HEAVEN 211 

life of men, but it raises this spiritual life to be the essential 
business of all human knowledge. All the spiritual senti- 
ments of man, the aspirations of the conscious soul in all their 
purity and pathos, the vast religious experience and poten- 
tialities of the human heart seen in the history of our spiritual 
life as a race — this is, we say, the principal subject of science 
and of philosophy. No philosophy, no morality, no polity 
can rest on stable foundations if this be not its grand aim; 
if it have not a systematic creed, a rational object of worship, 
and a definite discipline of life. But then we treat these 
spiritual functions of the Soul, not as mystical aenigmas, but 
as positive phenomena, and we satisfy them by philosophic 
and historic answers and not by naked figments. And we 
think that the teaching of history and a true synthesis of 
science bring us far closer to the heart of this spiritual life 
than do any spiritualist guesses, and do better equip us to 
read aright the higher secrets of the Soul : meaning always 
by Soul the consensus of the faculties which observation 
discovers in the human organism. 

On the other hand, without entering into an idle dispute 
with the spiritualist orthodoxy, we insist on regarding this 
organism as a perfectly homogeneous unit, to be studied from 
one end of it to the other by rational scientific methods. We 
pretend to give no sort of cause as lying behind the manifold 
powers of the organism. We say the immaterial entity is 
something which we cannot grasp, which explains nothing, 
for which we cannot have a shadow of evidence. We are de- 
termined to treat man as a human organism, just as we treat 
a dog as a canine organism ; and we know no ground for 
saying, and no good to be got by pretending, that man is a 
human organism plus an indescribable entity. We say, the 
human organism is a marvellous thing, sublime if you will, 
of subtlest faculty and sensibility; but we, at any rate, can 



212 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

find nothing in man which is not an organic part of this or- 
ganism; we find the faculties of mind, feeling, and will, 
directly dependent on physical organs ; and to talk to us of 
mind, feeling, and will continuing their functions in the 
absence of physical organs and visible organisms, is to use 
language which, to us at least, is pure nonsense. 

And now to turn to the great phenomenon of material 
organisms which we call Death. The human organism, 
like every other organism, ultimately loses that unstable 
equilibrium of its correlated forces which we name Life, 
and ceases to be an organism or system of organs, adjusting 
its internal relations to its external conditions. Thereupon 
the existence of the complex independent entity to which we 
attribute consciousness, undoubtedly — i.e. for aught we 
know to the contrary — comes to an end. But the activities 
of this organism do not come to an end, except so far as these 
activities need fresh sensations and material organs. And 
a great part of these activities, and far the noblest part, only 
need fresh sensations and material organs in other similar 
organisms. Whilst there is an abundance of these in due 
relation, the activities go on ad infinitum with increasing 
energy. 

We have not the slightest reason to suppose that the con- 
sciousness of the organism continues, for we mean by con- 
sciousness the sum of sensations of a particular organism, 
and the particular organism being dissolved, we have noth- 
ing left whereto to attribute consciousness, and the proposal 
strikes us like a proposal to regard infinity as conscious. 
So, of course, with the sensations separately, and with them 
the power of accumulating knowledge, of feeling, thinking, 
or of modifying the existence in correspondence with the 
outward environment. Life, in the technical sense of the 
word, is at an end, but the activities of which that life is the 



HEAVEN 213 

source were never so potent. Our age is familiar enough with 
the truth of the persistence of energy, and no one supposes 
that with the dissolution of the body the forces of its material 
elements are lost. They only pass into new combinations 
and continue to work elsewhere. 

Far less is the energy of the activities lost. The earth, 
and every country, every farmstead, and every city on it, are 
standing witnesses that the physical activities are not lost. 
As century rolls after century, we see in every age more potent 
fruits of the labour which raised the Pyramids, or won Hol- 
land from the sea, or carved the Theseus out of marble. 
The bodily organisms which wrought them have passed into 
gases and earths, but the activity they displayed is producing 
the precise results designed on a far grander scale in each 
generation. Much more do the intellectual and moral en- 
ergies work unceasingly. Not a single manifestation of 
thought or feeling is without some result so soon as it is 
communicated to a similar organism. It passes into the 
sum of his mental and moral being. 

But there is about the persistence of the moral energies this 
special phenomenon. It marks the vast interval between 
physical and moral science. The energies of material ele- 
ments, so far as we see, disperse, or for the most part disperse. 
The energies of an intellectual and moral kind are very 
largely continued in their organic unities. The consensus 
of the mental, of the moral, of the emotional powers may go 
on, working as a whole, producing precisely the same results, 
with the same individuality, whether the material organism, 
the source and original base of these powers, be in physical 
function or not. The menial and moral powers do not, it is 
true, increase and grow, develop or vary within themselves. 
Nor do they in their special individuality produce visible 
results, for they are no longer in direct relations with their 



214 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

special material organisms. But the mental and moral 
powers are not dispersed like gases. They retain their unity, 
they retain their organic character, and they retain the whole 
of their power of passing into and stimulating the brains of 
living men ; and in these they carry on their activity precisely 
as they did, whilst the bodies in which they were formed 
absorbed and exhaled material substance. 

Nay, more; the individuality and true activity of these 
mental and moral forces is often not manifest, and sometimes 
is not complete, so long as the organism continues its physical 
functions. Newton, we may suppose, has accomplished his 
great researches. They are destined to transform half the 
philosophy of mankind. But he is old, and incapable of 
fresh achievements. We will say he is feeble, secluded, 
silent, and lives shut up in his rooms. The activity of his 
mighty intellectual nature is being borne over the world on 
the wings of Thought, and works a revolution at every stroke. 
But otherwise the man Newton is not essentially distinguish- 
able from the nearest infirm pauper, and has as few and as 
feeble relations with mankind. At last the man Newton 
dies — that is, the body is dispersed into gas and dust. 
But the world, which is affected enormously by his intel- 
lect, is not in the smallest degree affected by his death. His 
activity continues the same; if it were worth while to con- 
ceal the fact of his death, no one of the millions who are so 
greatly affected by his thoughts would perceive it or know 
it. If he had discovered some means of prolonging a torpid 
existence till this hour, he might be living now, and it would 
not signify to us in the slightest degree whether his body 
breathed in the walls of his lodging or mouldered in the vaults 
of the Abbey. 

It may be said that if it does not signify much to us, it signi- 
fies a great deal to Isaac Newton. But is this true ? He no 



HEAVEN 215 

longer eats and sleeps, a burden to himself ; he no longer is tar- 
nishing his great name by feeble theology or querulous petti- 
ness. But if the small weaknesses and wants of the flesh are 
ended for him, all that makes Newton (and he had always 
lived for his posthumous, not his immediate fame) rises into 
greater activity and purer uses. We make no mystical or 
fanciful divinity of Death ; we do not deny its terrors or its 
evils. We are not responsible for it, and should welcome 
any reasonable prospect of eliminating or postponing this 
fatality, that -waits upon all organic nature. But it is no 
answer to philosophy or science to retort that Death is so 
terrible, therefore man must be designed to escape it. There 
are savages who persistently deny that men do die at all, 
either their bodies or their souls, asserting that the visible 
consequences of death are either an illusion or an artfully 
contrived piece of acting on the part of their friends, who 
have really decamped to the happy hunting-fields. This 
seems on the whole a more rational theory than that of im- 
material souls flying about space, as the spontaneous fancies 
of savages are sometimes more rational than the elaborate 
hypotheses of metaphysics. 

But though we do not presume to apologise for death, 
it is easy to see that many of the greatest moral and intellec- 
tual results of life are only possible, can only begin, when the 
claims of the animal life are satisfied; when the stormy, 
complex, and chequered career is over, and the higher tops 
of the intellectual or moral nature alone stand forth in the 
distance of time. What was the blind old harper of Scio 
to his contemporaries, or the querulous refugee from Flor- 
ence or even the boon companion and retired playwright 
of Stratford, or the blind and stern old Puritan of Bunhill 
Fields? The true work of Socrates and his life only began 
with his resplendent death, to say nothing of yet greater 



2l6 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

religious teachers, whose names I refrain from citing; and 
as to those whose lives have been cast in conflicts — the 
Caesars, the Alfreds, the Hildebrands, the Cromwells, the 
Fredericks — it is only after death, oftenest in ages after 
death, that they cease to be combatants, and become creators. 
It is not merely that they are only recognised in after-ages; 
the truth is, that their activity only begins when the surging 
of passion and sense ends, and turmoil dies away. Great 
intellects and great characters are necessarily in advance of 
their age; the care of the father and the mother begins to 
tell most truly in the ripe manhood of their children, when the 
parents are often in the grave, and not in the infancy which 
they see and are confronted with. The great must always 
feel with Kepler, — "It is enough as yet if I have a hearer 
now and then in a century." John Brown's body lies a-mould- 
ering in the grave, but his soul is marching along. 

We can trace this truth best in the case of great men ; but 
it is not confined to the great. Not a single act of thought or 
character ends with itself. Nay, more ; not a single nature in 
its entirety but leaves its influence for good or for evil. As 
a fact the good prevail ; but all act, all continue to act indefi- 
nitely, often in ever-widening circles. Physicists amuse us 
by tracing for us the infinite fortunes of some wave set in 
motion by force, its circles and its repercussions perpetually 
transmitted in new complications. But the career of a single 
intellect and character is a far more real force when it meets 
with suitable intellects and characters into whose action it is 
incorporated. Every life more or less forms another life, and 
lives in another life. Civilisation, nation, city, imply this 
fact. There is neither mysticism nor hyperbole, but simple 
observation in the belief, that the career of every human being 
in society does not end with the death of its body. In some 
sort its higher activities and potency can only begin truly 



HEAVEN 217 

when change is no longer possible for it. The worthy gain 
in influence and in range at each generation, just as the 
founders of some populous race gain a greater fatherhood 
at each succeeding growth of their descendants. And in 
some infinitesimal degree, the humblest life that ever turned 
a sod sends a wave — nay, more than a wave, a life — 
through the ever-growing harmony of human society. Not 
a soldier died at Marathon or Salamis, but did a stroke by 
which our thought is enlarged and our standard of duty 
formed to this day. 

Be it remembered that this is not hypothesis, but something 
perfectly real, — we may fairly say undeniable. We are 
not inventing an imaginary world, and saying it must be real 
because it is so pleasant to think of; we are only repeating 
truths on which our notion of history and society is based. 
The idea, no doubt, is usually limited to the famous, and to 
the great revolutions in civilisation. But no one who thinks 
it out carefully can deny that it is true of every human being 
in society in some lesser degree. The idea has not been, or 
is no longer, systematically enforced, invested with poetry 
and dignity, and deepened by the solemnity of religion. But 
why is that ? Because theological hypotheses of a new and 
heterogeneous existence have deadened our interest in the 
realities, the grandeur, and the perpetuity of our earthly 
life. 

In the best days of Rome, even without a theory of history 
or a science of society, it was a living faith, the true religion 
of thai majestic race. Jt is the real sentiment of all societies 
where the theological hypothesis has disappeared. It is no 

doubl now in England the great motive of virtue and energy. 

There have been few seasons in the world's history when the 
sense of moral responsibility and moral survival after death 
was more exalted and more vigorous than with the companions 



2l8 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of Vergniaud and Danton, to whom the dreams of theology 
were hardly intelligible. As we read the calm and humane 
words of Condorcet on the very edge of his yawning grave, 
we learn how the conviction of posthumous activity (not of 
posthumous fame), how the consciousness of a coming in- 
corporation with the glorious future of his race, can give a 
patience and a happiness equal to that of any martyr of the- 
ology. 

It would be an endless inquiry to trace the means whereby 
this sense of posthumous participation in the life of our fellows 
can be extended to the mass, as it certainly affects already the 
thoughtful and the refined. Without an education, a new 
social opinion, without a religion — I mean an organised 
religion, not a vague metaphysic — it is doubtless impossible 
that it should become universal and capable of overcoming 
selfishness. But make it at once the basis of philosophy, the 
standard of right and wrong, and the centre of a religion, 
and this will prove, perhaps, an easier task than that of teach- 
ing Greeks and Romans, Syrians and Moors, to look forward 
to a future life of ceaseless psalmody in an immaterial heaven. 
The astonishing feat was performed; and, perhaps, it may 
be easier to fashion a new public opinion, requiring merely 
that an accepted truth of philosophy should be popularised, 
which is already the deepest hope of some thoughtful spirits, 
and which does not take the suicidal course of trying to cast out 
the devil of selfishness by a direct appeal to the personal self. 

It is here that the strength of the human future over the 
celestial future is so clearly pre-eminent. Make the future 
hope a social activity, and we give to the present life a social 
ideal. Make the future hope personal beatitude, and per- 
sonality is stamped deeper on every act of our daily life. 
Now we make the future hope, in the truest sense, social, 
inasmuch as our future is simply an active existence pro- 



HEAVEN 219 

longed by society. And our future hope rests not in any vague 
yearning, of which we have as little evidence as we have 
definite conception : it rests on a perfectly certain truth, ac- 
cepted by all thoughtful minds, the truth that the actions, 
feelings, thoughts of every one of us — our minds, our char- 
acters, our souls as organic wholes — do marvellously influ- 
ence and mould each other ; that the highest part of ourselves, 
the abiding part of us, passes into other lives and continues 
to live in other lives. 

Can we conceive a more potent stimulus to rectitude, 
to daily and hourly striving after a true life, than this ever- 
present sense that we are indeed immortal ; not that we have 
an immortal something within us, but that in very truth we 
ourselves, our thinking, feeling, acting personalities, are im- 
mortal; nay, cannot die, but must ever continue what we 
make them, working and doing, if no longer receiving and 
enjoying ? And not merely we ourselves, in our personal iden- 
tity, are immortal, but each act, thought, and feeling is im- 
mortal; and this immortality is not some ecstatic and in- 
describable condition in space, but activity on earth in the 
real and known work of life, in the welfare of those whom we 
have loved, and in the happiness of those who come after us. 

And can it be difficult to idealise and give currency to a 
faith, which is a certain and undisputed fact of common 
sense as well as of philosophy? As we live for others in life, 
BO we live in others after death, as others have lived in us, 
and all for the common race. How deeply does such a belief 
as this bring home to each moment of life the mysterious per- 
petuity of ourselves ! For good, for evil, we cannot die; we 
cannot shake ourselves free from this eternity of our faculties. 
There is here no promise, it is true, of eternal sensations, en- 
joyments, meditations. There is no promise, be it plainly 
said, of anything but an immortality of influence, of spiritual 



220 



PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 



work, of glorified activity. We cannot even say that we shall 
continue to love; but we know that we shall be loved. It 
may well be that we shall consciously know no hope ourselves ; 
but we shall inspire hopes. It may be that we shall not think ; 
but others will think our thoughts, and enshrine our minds. 
If no sympathies shall thrill along our nerves, we shall be the 
spring of sympathy in distant generations ; and that, though 
we be the humblest, and the least of all the soldiers in the 
human host, the least celebrated and the worst remembered. 
For our lives live when we are most forgotten; and not a 
cup of water that we may have given to an unknown sufferer, 
or a wise word spoken in season to a child, but has added 
(whether we remember it, whether others remember it or 
not) a streak of happiness and strength to the world. Our 
earthly frames, like the grain of wheat, may be laid in the 
earth — and this image of our great spiritual Master is more 
fit for the social than for the celestial future — but the grain 
shall bear spiritual fruit, and multiply in kindred natures 
and in other selves. 

It is a merely verbal question if this be the life of the Soul 
when the Soul means the sum of the activities, or if there be 
any immortality where there is no consciousness. It is enough 
for us that we can trust to a real prolongation of our highest 
activity in the sensible lives of others, even though our own 
forces can gain nothing new, and are not reflected in a sensi- 
tive body. We do not get rid of Death, but we transfigure 
Death. Does any religion profess to do more ? It is enough 
for any creed that it can teach non omnis moriar ; it would be 
gross extravagance to say omnis non moriar, no part of me 
shall die. Death is the one inevitable law of Life. The 
business of religion is to show us what are its compensations. 
The spiritualist orthodoxy, like every other creed, is willing 
to allow that death robs us of a great deal, that very much 



HEAVEN 221 

of us does die ; nay, it teaches that this dies utterly, for ever, 
leaving no trace but dust. And thus the spiritualist ortho- 
doxy exaggerates death, and adds a fresh terror to its power. 
We, on the contrary, would seek to show that much of us, 
and that the best of us, does not die, or at least does not end. 
And the difference between our faith and that of the orthodox 
is this : we look to the permanence of the activities which give 
others happiness; they look to the permanence of the con- 
sciousness which can enjoy happiness. Which is the nobler? 
What need we then to promise or to hope more than an 
eternity of spiritual influence? Yet, after all, 'tis no question 
as to what kind of eternity man would prefer to select. We 
have no evidence that he has any choice before him. If 
we were creating a universe of our own and a human race 
on an ideal mould, it might be rational to discuss what kind 
of eternity was the most desirable, and it might then become 
a question if we should not begin by eliminating death. 
But as we are, with death in the world, and man as we know 
him submitting to the fatality of his nature, the rational in- 
quiry is this — how best to order his life, and to use the eter- 
nity that he has. And an immortality of prolonged activity 
on earth he has as certainly as he has civilisation, or progress, 
or society. And the wise man in the evening of life may be 
well content to say: "I have worked and thought, and have 
been conscious in the flesh ; I have done with the flesh, and 
therewith with the toil of thought and the troubles of sensa- 
tion; I am ready to pass into the spiritual community of 
human souls, and when this man's flesh wastes away from 
me, may I be found worthy to become part of the influence of 
humanity itself, and so 

Join the choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the world." 



222 



PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 



That the doctrine of the celestial future appeals to the 
essence of self appears very strongly in its special rebuke to 
the doctrine of the social future. It repeats, " We agree with 
all you say about the prolonged activity of man after death, 
we see of course that the solid achievements of life are carried 
on, and we grant you that it signifies nothing to those who 
profit by his work that the man no longer breathes in the 
flesh : but what is all that to the man, to you, and to me ? we 
shall not feel our work, we shall not have the indescribable 
satisfaction which our souls now have in living, in effecting 
our work, and profiting by others. What is the good of man- 
kind to me, when I am mouldering unconscious ?" 

This is the true materialism; here is the physical theory 
of another life ; this is the unspiritual denial of the soul, the 
binding it down to the clay of the body. We say, "All that 
is great in you shall not end, but carry on its activity per- 
petually and in a purer way"; and you reply, "What care I 
for what is great in me, and its possible work in this vale of 
tears; I want to feel life, I want to enjoy, I want my per- 
sonality," — in other words, "I want my senses, I want my 
body." Keep your body and keep your senses in any way 
that you know. We can only wonder and say, with Frederic 
to his runaway soldiers, "Wolit ihr immer leben?" But we, 
who know that a higher form of activity is only to be reached by 
a subjective life in society, will continue to regard a perpetuity 
of mere sensation without any power to act or any being to 
love as the true Hell, for we feel that the perpetual worth of 
our lives is the one thing precious to care for, and not an eter- 
nity of vacuous consciousness. 

It is not merely that this eternity of psalmody is so gross, 
so sensual, so indolent, so selfish a creed ; but its worst evil 
is that it paralyses practical life, and throws it into discord. 
A life of vanity in a vale of tears to be followed by an infinity 



HEAVEN 223 

of celestial rapture, is necessarily a life which is of infinitesimal 
importance. The incongruity of the attempts to connect the 
two, and to make the vale of tears the ante-chamber or the 
judgment -dock of heaven, grows greater and not less as ages 
roll on. The more we think and learn, and the higher rises 
our social philosophy and our insight into human destiny, 
the more the reality and importance of the social future im- 
presses us, whilst the fancy of the celestial future grows un- 
real and incongruous. As we get to know what thinking 
means, and feeling means, and the more truly we understand 
what life means, the more completely do the promises of the 
celestial transcendentalism fail to interest us. 

We have come to see that to continue to live is to carry on 
a series of correlated sensations, and to set in motion a series 
of corresponding forces ; to think is to marshal a set of ob- 
served perceptions with a view to certain observed phe- 
nomena ; to feel implies something of which we have a real 
assurance affecting our own consensus within. The whole 
set of positive thoughts compels us to believe that it is an in- 
finite apathy to which your heaven would consign us, without 
objects, without relations, without change, without growth, 
without action, an absolute nothingness, a nirvdna of im- 
potence, — this is not life; it is not consciousness; it is not 
happiness. So far as we can grasp the hypothesis, it seems 
equally ludicrous and repulsive. You may call it paradise; 
but we call it conscious annihilation. You may long for it, 
if you have been so taught ; just as if you had been taught to 
cherish such hopes, you might be now yearning for the mo- 
ment when you might become the immaterial principle of a 
comet, or as you might tell me, that you really were the ether, 
and were about to take your place in Space. 

This is how these sublimities affect us. But we know that 
to many this future is one of spiritual development, B life 



224 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of growth and continual upsoaring of still higher affection. 
It may be so; but to our mind these are contradictions in 
terms. We cannot understand what life and affection can 
mean, where you postulate the absence of every condition by 
which life and affection are possible. Can there be develop- 
ment where there is no law, thought or affection where object 
and subject are confused into one essence? How can that 
be existence, where everything of which we have experience, 
and everything which we can define, is presumed to be unable 
to enter ? Besides, this is not the orthodox, not the popular 
view. To us these things are all incoherences; and in the 
midst of practical realities and the solid duties of life, sheer 
impertinences. The field is full ; each human life has a per- 
fectly real and a vast future to look forward to ; these hyper- 
bolic aenigmas disturb our grave duties and our solid hopes. 
No wonder, then, whilst they are still so rife, that men are 
dull to the moral responsibility which, in its awfulness, begins 
only at the grave; that they are so little influenced by the 
futurity which will judge them; that they are blind to the 
dignity and beauty of death, and shuffle off the dead life and 
the dead body with such cruel disrespect. The fumes of the 
celestial immortality still confuse them. 

It is only when an earthly future is the fulfilment of a worthy 
life on earth, that we can see all the majesty as well as the 
glory of the world beyond the grave ; and then only will it 
fulfil its moral and religious purpose as the great guide of 
human conduct. 



XV 
REPLY TO CRITICISMS 

See the Introductory Note to Essay XIII 

Whether the preceding discussion has given much new 
strength to the doctrine of man's immaterial Soul and Future 
existence I will not pretend to decide. But I cannot feel that 
it has shaken the reality of man's posthumous influence, my 
chief and immediate theme. It seemed to me that the time 
had come, when, seeing how vague and hesitating were the 
prevalent beliefs on this subject, it was most important to 
remember that, from a purely earthly point of view, man had 
a spiritual nature, and could look forward after death to some- 
thing that marked him off from the beasts that perish. I 
cannot see that what I urged has been in substance displaced ; 
though much criticism (and some of it of a verbal kind) 
has been directed at the language which I used of others. 
My object was to try if this life could not be made richer; 
not to destroy the dreams of another. But has the old doc- 
trine of a future life been in any way strengthened? Mr. 
Hutton, it is true, has a "personal wish" for a perpetuity of 
volition. Lord Blachford "believes because he is told" in 
Holy Writ. And Professor Huxley knows of no evidence thai 
"such a soul and a future life exist"; and he seems not to 
believe in them at all. 

Philosophical discussion must Languish a little, if, when we 
ask for the philosophical grounds for a certain belief, we find 
one philosopher believing because lie has a "personal wish" 

Q 225 



226 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

for it, and another "believing because he is told." Mr. Hutton 
says that, as far as he knows, "the thoughts, affections, and 
volitions are not likely to perish with his body." Professor 
Huxley seems to think it just as likely that they should. Ar- 
guments are called for to enable us to decide between these 
two authorities. And the only argument we have hitherto 
got is Mr. Hutton's "personal wish," and Lord Blachford's 
ita scriptum est. I confess myself unable to continue an argu- 
ment which runs into believing "because I am told." It is 
for this reason that the lazzarone at Naples believes in the 
blood of St. Januarius. 

My original propositions may be stated thus. 

i. Philosophy as a whole (I do not say specially biological 
science) has established a functional relation to exist between 
every fact of thinking, willing, or feeling, on the one side, and 
some molecular change in the body on the other side. 

2. This relation is simply one of correspondence between 
moral and physical facts, not one of assimilation. The 
moral fact does not become a physical fact, is not adequately 
explained by it, and must be mainly studied as a moral fact, 
by methods applicable to morals — not as a physical fact, 
by methods applicable to physics. 

3. The moral facts of human life, the laws of man's 
mental, moral, and affective nature, must consequently be 
studied, as they have always been studied, by direct ob- 
servation of these facts; yet the correspondences, specially 
discovered by biological science between man's mind and 
his body, must always be kept in view. They are an in- 
dispensable, inseparable, but subordinate part of moral 
philosophy. 

4. We do not diminish the supreme place of the spiritual 
facts in life and in philosophy by admitting these spiritual 
facts to have a relation with molecular and organic facts 



REPLY TO CRITICISMS 227 

in the human organism — provided that we never forget 
how small and dependent is the part which the study of 
the molecular and organic phenomena must play in moral 
and social science. 

5. Those whose minds have been trained in the modern 
philosophy of universal Law cannot understand what is 
meant by sensation, thought, and energy, existing without 
any basis of molecular change ; and to talk to them of sen- 
sation, thought, and energy, continuing in the absence of any 
molecules whatever, is precisely such a contradiction in 
terms as to suppose that civilisation will continue in the 
absence of any men whatever. 

6. Yet man is so constituted as a social being, that the 
energies which he puts out in life mould the minds, characters, 
and habits of his fellow-men; so that each man's life is, 
in effect, indefinitely prolonged in human society. This is 
a phenomenon quite peculiar to man and to human society, 
and of course depends on there being men in active associa- 
tion with each other. Physics and biology can teach us 
nothing about it ; and physicists and biologists may very 
easily forget its importance. It can be learnt only by long 
and refined observations in moral and mental philosophy as 
a whole, and in the history of civilisation as a whole. 

7. Lastly, as a corollary, it may be useful to retain the 
words Soul and Future Life for their associations; provided 
we make it clear that we mean by Soul the combined facul- 
ties of the living organism, and by future life the subjective 
effect of each man's objective life on the actual lives of his 
fellow-men. 

I. Now I find in Mr. TTutton's paper hardly any attempt 
to disprove the first six of these propositions. He is employed 

for the most part in asserting that his hypothesis of a future 
state is a more agreeable one than mine, and in earnest 



228 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

complaints that I should call his view of a future state a 
selfish or personal hope. As to the first, I will only remark 
that it is scarcely a question whether his notion of immor- 
tality is beautiful or not, but whether it is true. If there is 
no rational ground for expecting such immortality to be a 
solid fact, it is to little purpose to show us what a sublime 
idea it would be if there were anything in it. As to the 
second, I will only say that I do not call his notion of a future 
existence a selfish or personal hope. In the last paragraph 
of my second paper I speak with respect of the opinion of 
those who look forward to a future of moral development in- 
stead of to an idle eternity of psalm-singing. My language as 
to the selfishness of the vulgar ideas of salvation was directed 
to those who insist that unless they are to feel a continuance 
of pleasure they do not care for any continuance of their in- 
fluence at all. The vulgar are apt to say that what they 
desire is the sense of personal satisfaction, and if they cannot 
have this they care for nothing else. This, I maintain, is 
a selfish and debasing idea. It is the common notion of the 
popular religion, and its tendency to concentrate the mind 
on a merely personal salvation does exert an evil effect on 
practical conduct. I once heard a Scotch preacher, dilating 
on the narrowness of the gate, etc., exclaim, " O dear brethren, 
who would care to be saved in a crowd?" 

I do not say this of the life of grander activity in which 
Mr. Hutton believes, and which Lord Blachford so elo- 
quently describes. This is no doubt a fine ideal, and I will 
not say other than an elevating hope. But on what does it 
rest? Why this ideal rather than any other? Each of us 
may imagine, as I said at the outset, his own Elysian fields, 
or his own mystic rose. But is this philosophy? Is it even 
religion? Besides, there is this other objection to it. It is 
not Christianity, but Neo-Christianity. It is a fantasia with 



REPLY TO CRITICISMS 229 

variations on the orthodox creed. There is not a word 
of the kind in the Bible. Lord Blachford says he believes 
in it, "because he is told." He admits that natural phi- 
losophy gives him no evidence at all of future life. But it 
so happens that he is not told this, at any rate in the creeds 
and formularies of orthodox faith. If this view of future 
life is to rest entirely on revelation, it is a very singular thing 
that the Bible is silent on the matter. Whatever kind of 
future ecstasy may be suggested in some texts, certain it is 
that such a glorified energy as Lord Blachford paints in 
glowing colours is nowhere described in the Bible. There is 
a constant practice nowadays, when the popular religion is 
criticised, that earnest defenders of it come forward exclaim- 
ing: "Oh! that is only the vulgar notion of our religion. 
My idea of the doctrine is so and so" — something which 
the speaker has invented without countenance from official 
authority. For my part, I hold Christianity to be what is 
taught in average churches and chapels to the millions of 
professing Christians. And I say it is a very serious fact 
when philosophical defenders of religion begin by repudiating 
that which is taught in average pulpits, and tell the world that 
Christianity really means — something the speaker has just 
devised himself. 

Perhaps a little more attention to my actual words might 
have rendered unnecessary the complaints in all these papers 
as to my language about the hopes which men cherish for the 
future. In the first place, I freely admit that the hopes of a 
grander energy in heaven are not open to the charge of vulgar 
selfishness. I said that they are unintelligible, not thai they 
are unworthy. They are unintelligible to those who are 
continually alive to the fact I have placed as my first propo- 
sition — thai every worn! phenomenon is in functional rela- 
tion with some physical phenomenon. To those who deny 



230 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

or ignore this truth, there is doubtless no incoherence in all 
the ideals so eloquently described in the papers of Mr. Hutton 
and Lord Blachford. But once get this conception as the 
substratum of your entire mental and moral philosophy, 
and it is as incoherent to talk to us of your immaterial develop- 
ment as it would be to talk of obtaining redness without any 
red thing. 

I will try to explain more fully why this idea of a glorified 
activity implies a contradiction in terms to those who are 
imbued with the sense of correspondence between physical 
and moral facts. When we conceive any process of thinking, 
we call up before us a complex train of conditions ; objective 
facts outside of us or the revived impression of such facts; 
the molecular effect of these facts upon certain parts of our 
organism, the association of these with similar facts recalled 
by memory, an elaborate mechanism to correlate these im- 
pressions, an unknown to be made known, and a difficulty 
to be overcome. All systematic thought implies relations 
with the external world present or recalled, and it also implies 
some shortcoming in our powers of perfecting those relations. 
When we meditate, it is on a basis of facts which we are ob- 
serving, or have observed and are now recalling, and with 
a view to get at some result which baffles our direct obser- 
vation and hinders some practical purpose. 

The same holds good of our moral energy. Ecstasy and 
mere adoration exclude energy of action. Moral develop- 
ment implies difficulties to be overcome, qualities balanced 
against one another under opposing conditions, this or that 
appetite tempted, this or that instinct tested by proof. Moral 
development does not grow like a fungus; it is a continual 
struggle in surrounding conditions of a specific kind, and 
an active putting forth of a variety of practical faculties in 
the midst of real obstacles. 




REPLY TO CRITICISMS 23 1 

So, too, of the affections, they equally imply conditions. 
Sympathy does not spurt up like a fountain in the air; it 
implies beings in need of help, evils to be alleviated, a fellow- 
ship of giving and taking, the sense of protecting and being 
protected, a pity for suffering, an admiration of power, good- 
ness, and truth. All of these imply an external world to act 
in, human beings as objects, and human life under human 
conditions. 

Now all these conditions are eliminated from the orthodox 
ideal of a future state. There are to be no physical impres- 
sions, no material difficulties, no evil, no toil, no struggle, 
no human beings and no human objects. The only con- 
dition is a complete absence of all conditions, or all conditions 
of which we have any experience. And we say, we cannot 
imagine what you mean by your intensified sympathy, your 
broader thought, your infinitely varied activity, when you 
begin by postulating the absence of all that makes sympathy, 
thought, and activity possible, all that makes life really 
noble. 

A mystical and inane ecstasy is an appropriate ideal for 
this paradise of negations, and this is the orthodox view; 
but it is not a high view. A glorified existence of greater 
activity and development may be a high view, but it is a con- 
tradiction in terms; exactly, I say, as if you were to talk 
of a higher civilisation without any human beings. But 
this is simply a metaphysical afterthought to escape from 
a moral dilemma. Mr. Hutton is surely mistaken in saying 
that Positivists have forgotten that Christians ever had any 
meaning in their hopes of a "beatific vision." He must 
know that Dante and Thomas a Kempis form the religious 
books of Positivists, and they are, with some Other manuals 

of Catholic theology, amongst the small number of volumes 

which Comtc recommended for constant use. We can see 



232 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

in the celestial ''visions" of a mystical and unscientific age 
much that was beautiful in its time, though not the highest 
product even of theology. But in our day these visions of 
paradise have lost what moral value they had, whilst the 
progress of philosophy has made them incompatible with our 
modern canons of thought. 

Mr. Hutton supposes me to object to any continuance of 
sensation as an evil in itself. My objection was not that 
consciousness should be prolonged in immortality, but that 
nothing else but consciousness should be prolonged. All 
real human life, energy, thought, and active affection, are 
to be made impossible in your celestial paradise, but you 
insist on retaining consciousness. To retain the power of 
feeling, whilst all means and object are taken away from 
thinking, all power of acting, all opportunity of cultivating 
the faculties of sympathy are stifled : this seems to me some- 
thing else than a good. It would seem to me, that simply 
to be conscious, and yet to lie thoughtless, inactive, irre- 
sponsive, with every faculty of a man paralysed within you, 
as if by that villanous drug which produces torpor whilst it 
intensifies sensation: such a consciousness as this must be 
a very place of torment. 

I think some contradictions which Mr. Hutton supposes 
he detects in my paper are not very hard to reconcile. I 
admitted that Death is an evil, it seems ; but I spoke of our 
posthumous activity as a higher kind of influence. We might 
imagine, of course, a Utopia, with neither suffering, waste, 
nor loss ; and compared with such a world, the world, as we 
know it, is full of evils, of which Death is obviously one. 
But relatively, in such a world as alone we know, Death 
becomes simply a law of organised nature, from which we 
draw some of our guiding motives of conduct. In precisely 
the same way the necessity of toil is an evil in itself; but, 






REPLY TO CRITICISMS 233 

with man and his life as we know them, we draw from it some 
of our highest moral energies. The grandest qualities of 
human nature, such as we know it at least, would become 
forever impossible, if Labour and Death were not the law 
of life. 

Mr. Hutton again takes but a pessimist view of life when 
he insists how much of our activity is evil, and how ques- 
tionable is the future of the race. I am no pessimist, and I 
believe in a providential control over all human actions by 
the great Power of Humanity, which indeed brings good out 
of evil, and assures, at least for some thousands of centuries, 
a certain progress towards the higher state. Pessimism 
as to the essential dignity of man and the steady develop- 
ment of his race, is one of the surest marks of the enervating 
influence of this dream of a celestial glory. If I called it as 
wild a desire as to go roving through space in a comet, it is 
because I can attach no meaning to a human life to be pro- 
longed without a human frame and a human world ; and it 
seems to me as rational to talk of becoming an angel as to 
talk of becoming an ellipse. 

By "duties" of the world beyond the grave, I meant the 
duties which are imposed on us in life, by the certainty that 
our action must continue to have an indefinite effect. The 
phrase may be inelegant, but I do not think the meaning is 
obscure. 

II. I cannot agree with Lord Blachford that I have fallen 
into any confusion between a substance and an attribute. 
I am quite aware that the word Soul has been hitherto used 
for some centuries as an entity. And I proposed to retain 
the term for an attribute. It is a very common process in the 
history of thought. Electricity, Life, Heat, were once sup- 
posed to be substances. We now very usefully retain these 
words for a set of observed conditions or qualities. 



234 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

I agree with Mr. Spencer that the unity of the social or- 
ganism is quite as complete as that of the individual organism. 
I do not confuse the two kinds of unity ; but I say that man 
is in no important sense a unit that society is not also a unit. 

With regard to the "percipient" and the "perceptible" 
I cannot follow Lord Blachford. He speaks a tongue that 
I do not understand. I have no means of dividing the 
universe into "percipients" and "perceptibles." I know no 
reason why a "percipient" should not be a "perceptible," 
none why I should not be "perceptible," and none why 
beings about me should not be "perceptible." I think we 
are all perfectly "perceptible" — indeed some of us are more 
"perceptible" than "percipient" — though I cannot say 
that Lord Blachford is always "perceptible" to me. And 
how does my being "perceptible," or not being "perceptible," 
prove that I have an immortal soul ? Is a dog "perceptible," 
is he "percipient"? Has he not some of the qualities of a 
"percipient," and if so, has he an immortal soul? Is an 
ant, a tree, a bacterium, percipient, and has any of these an 
immortal soul ? for I find Lord Blachford declaring there is 
an "ineradicable difference between the motions of a ma- 
terial and the sensations of a living being," as if the animal 
world were percipient, and the inorganic perceptible. But 
surely in the sensations of a living being the animal world 
must be included. Where does the vegetable world come 
in? 

I used the word "organism" advisedly when I said that 
will, thought, and affection are functions of a living organ- 
ism. I decline exactly to localise the organ of any function 
of mind or will. When I am asked, What are we ? I reply 
we are men. When I am asked, Are we our bodies? I say 
no, nor are we our minds. Have we no sense of personality, 
of unity? I am asked. I say, Certainly; it is an acquired 




REPLY TO CRITICISMS 235 

result of our nervous organisation, liable to be interrupted 
by derangements of that nervous organisation. What is it 
that makes us think and feel? The facts of our human 
nature; I cannot get behind this, and I need no further 
explanation. We are men, and can do what men can do. 
I say the tangible collection of organs known as a "man" 
(not the consensus or the condition, but the man) thinks, 
wills, and feels, just as much as that visible organism lives 
and grows. We do not say that this or that ganglion in par- 
ticular lives and grows ; we say the man grows. It is as easy 
to me to imagine that we shall grow fifteen feet high, when 
we have no body, as that we shall grow in knowledge, good- 
ness, activity, etc., etc., etc., when we have no organs. And 
the absence of all molecular attributes would be, I should 
think, particularly awkward in that life of cometary motion 
in the interstellar spaces with which Lord Blachford threatens 
us. But as the poet says : — 

Trasumanar significar per verba 
Non si porria — 

"If" says he, "practical duties are necessary for the per- 
fection of life," we can take a little interstellar exercise. 
Why, practical duties are the sum and substance of life; 
and life which does not centre in practical duties is not Life, 
but a trance. 

Lord Blachford, who is somewhat punctilious in terms, 
asks me what I consider myself to understand "by the in- 
corporation of a consensus of faculties with a glorious future." 
Well ! it so happens that I did not use that phrase. I have 
never spoken of an immortal Soul anywhere, nor do 1 use 
the word Soul of any but the living man. I said a man 
might look forward to incorporation with the future of his 
race, explaining that to mean his "posthumous activity." 



236 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

And I think at any rate the phrase is quite as reasonable as 
to say that I look forward, as Mr. Hutton does, to a " union 
with God." What does Mr. Hutton, or Lord Blachford, 
understand himself to mean by that? 

Surely Lord Blachford's epigram about the fiddle and the 
tune is hardly fortunate. Indeed, that exactly expresses 
what I find faulty in the view of himself and the theologians. 
He thinks the tune will go on playing when the fiddle is broken 
up and burned. I say nothing of the kind. I do not say 
the man will continue to exist after death. I simply say 
that his influence will; that other men will do and think 
what he taught them to do or to think. Just so, a general 
would be said to win a battle which he planned and directed, 
even if he had been killed in an early part of it. What is 
there of fiddle and tune about this? I certainly think that 
when Mozart and Beethoven have left us great pieces of 
music, it signifies little to art if the actual fiddle or even the 
actual composer continue to exist or not. I never said the 
tune would exist. I said that men would remember it and 
repeat it. I must thank Lord Blachford for a happy illus- 
tration of my own meaning. But it is he who expects the 
tune to exist without the fiddle. / say, you can't have a tune 
without a fiddle, nor a fiddle without wood. 

III. I have reserved the criticism of Professor Huxley, be- 
cause it lies apart from the principal discussion, and turns 
mainly on some incidental remarks of mine on ''biological 
reasoning about spiritual things." 

I note three points at the outset. Professor Huxley does 
not himself pretend to any evidence for a theological soul 
and future life. Again, he does not dispute the account I 
give of the functional relation of physical and moral facts. 
He seems surprised that I should understand it, not being a 
biologist; but he is kind enough to say that my statement 



REPLY TO CRITICISMS 237 

may pass. Lastly, he does not deny the reality of man's 
posthumous activity. Now these three are the main purposes 
of my argument ; and in these I have Professor Huxley with 
me. He is no more of a theologian than I am. Indeed, he 
is only scandalised that I should see any good in priests at 
all. He might have said more plainly -that, when the man 
is dead, there is an end of the matter. But this clearly is 
his opinion, and he intimates as much in his paper. Only 
he would say no more about it, bury the carcase, and end 
the tale, leaving all thoughts about the future to those whose 
faith is more robust and whose hopes are richer ; by which I 
understand him to mean persons weak enough to listen to the 
priests. 

Now this does not satisfy me. I call it materialism, for it 
exaggerates the importance of the physical facts, and ignores 
that of the spiritual facts. And the object of my paper was 
simply this: that as the physical facts are daily growing 
quite irresistible, it is of urgent importance to place the 
spiritual facts on a sound scientific basis at once. Professor 
Huxley implies that his business is with the physical facts, 
and the spiritual facts must take care of themselves. I can- 
not agree with him. That is precisely the difference between 
us. The spiritual facts of man's nature are the business of 
all who undertake to denounce priestcraft, and especially of 
those who preach Lay Sermons. 

Professor Huxley complains that I should join in the view- 
halloo against biological science. Now I never have sup- 
posed that biological science was in the position of the hunted 
fox. I thought it was the hunter, booted and spurred and 
riding over us all, with Professor Huxley leaping the most 
terrific fences and cracking his whip with intense gusto. As 
to biological science, it is the Last thing that I should try to 
run down; and I must protect, with all sincerity, that I 



238 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

wrote without a thought of Professor Huxley at all. He 
insists on knowing, in the most peremptory way, of whom I 
was thinking, as if I were thinking of him. Of whom else 
could I be thinking, forsooth, when I spoke of Biology? 
Well ! I did not bite my thumb at him, but I bit my thumb. 

Seriously, I was not writing at Professor Huxley, or I 
should have named him. I have a very great admiration 
for his work in biology; I have learned much from him; I 
have followed his courses of lectures years and years ago, 
and have carefully studied his books. If, in questions which 
belong to sociology, morals, and to general philosophy, he 
seems to me hardly an authority, why need we dispute? 
Dog should not bite dog; and he and I have many a wolf 
that we both would keep from the fold. 

But if I did not mean Professor Huxley, whom did I 
mean? Now my paper, I think clearly enough, alluded to 
two very different kinds of Materialism. There is systematic 
Materialism, and there is the vague Materialism. The emi- 
nent example of the first is the unlucky remark of Cabanis 
that the brain secretes thought, as the liver secretes bile ; and 
there is much of the same sort in many foreign theories — in 
the tone of Moleschott, Buchner, and the like. The most 
distinct examples of it in this country are found amongst 
phrenologists, spiritualists, some mental pathologists, and a 
few communist visionaries. The far wider, vaguer, and more 
dangerous school of Materialism is found in a multitude of 
quarters — in all those who insist exclusively on the physical 
side of moral phenomena — all, in short, who, to use Pro- 
fessor Huxley's phrase, are employed in " building up a 
physical theory of moral phenomena." Those who confuse 
moral and physical phenomena are indeed few. Those who 
exaggerate the physical side of moral phenomena are many. 

Now, though I did not allude to Professor Huxley in what 



REPLY TO CRITICISMS 239 

I wrote, his criticism convinces me that he is sometimes at 
least found among these last. His paper is an excellent 
illustration of the very error which I condemned. The 
issue between us is this : — We both agree that every mental 
and moral fact is in functional relation with some molecular 
fact. So far we are entirely on the same side, as against all 
forms of theological and metaphysical doctrine which con- 
ceive the possibility of human feeling without a human body. 
But then, says Professor Huxley, if I can trace the molecular 
facts which are the antecedents of the mental and moral 
facts, I have explained these mental and moral facts. That 
I deny; just as much as I should deny that a chemical analy- 
sis of the body could ever lead to an explanation of the 
physical organism. 

Then, says the Professor, when I have traced out the 
molecular facts, I have built up a physical theory of moral 
phenomena. That again I deny. I say there is no such 
thing, or no rational thing, that can be called a physical 
theory of moral phenomena; any more than there is a moral 
theory of physical phenomena. What sort of a thing would 
be a physical theory of history — history explained by the 
influence of climate or the like? The issue between us 
centres in this. I say that the physical side of moral phe- 
nomena bears about the same part in the moral sciences that 
the facts about climate bear in the sum of human civilisation. 
And, that to look to the physical facts as an explanation of 
the moral, or even as an independent branch of the study of 
moral facts, is perfectly idle; jusl as it would be if a mere 
physical geographer pretended to give us, out of his geog- 
raphy, a climatic philosophy of hi -lory. 

Again, Professor Huxley has not been deterred from the 
astounding paradox of proposing to us a physiological theory 
of religion. He tells us how "the religious feelings may be 



24O PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

brought within the range of physiological inquiry." And he 
proposes as a problem — "What diseased viscus may have 
been responsible for the 'Priest in Absolution' ?" I will drop 
all epithets; but I must say that I call that materialism, 
and materialism not very nice of its kind. One might as 
reasonably propose as a problem — What barometrical read- 
ings are responsible for the British Constitution? and sug- 
gest a congress of meteorologists to do the work of Hallam, 
Stubbs, and Freeman. No doubt there is some connection 
between the House of Commons and the English climate, 
and so there is no doubt some connection between religious 
theories and physical organs. But to talk of "bringing reli- 
gion within the range of physiological inquiry" is simply to 
stare through the wrong end of the telescope, and to turn 
philosophy and science upside down. Ah ! Professor Hux- 
ley, this is a bad day's work for scientific progress — 

rj K€v yrjOrjo-ai Ilpta/xos, Ilpta/xoid re TratSes- 

Pope Pius and his people will be glad when they read that 
fatal sentence of yours. When I complained of "the attempt 
to dispose of the deepest moral truths of human nature on a 
bare physical or physiological basis," I could not have ex- 
pected to read such an illustration of my meaning by Professor 
Huxley. 

Perhaps he will permit me to inform him (since that is 
the style which he affects) that there once was — and indeed 
we may say still is — an institution called the Catholic 
Church; that it has had a long and strange history, and 
subtle influences of all kinds; and I venture to think that 
Professor Huxley may learn more about the Priest in Absolu- 
tion by a few weeks' study of the Catholic system than by 
inspecting the diseased viscera of the whole human race. 
When Professor Huxley's historical and religious studies 



:!! 



REPLY TO CRITICISMS 24 1 

"have advanced so far as to enable him to explain" the his- 
tory of Catholicism, I think he will admit that "Priestcraft" 
cannot well be made a chapter in a physiological manual. 
It may be cheap pulpit thunder, but this idea of his of in- 
specting a "diseased viscus" is precisely what I meant by 
"biological reasoning about spiritual things." And I stand 
by it, that it is just as false in science as it is deleterious in 
morals. It is an attempt (I will not say arrogant, I am 
inclined to use another epithet) to explain, by physical obser- 
vations, what can only be explained by the most subtle moral, 
sociological, and historical observations. It is to think you 
can find the golden eggs by cutting up the goose, instead of 
watching the goose to see where she lays the eggs. 

I am quite aware that Professor Huxley has elsewhere 
formulated his belief that Biology is the science which "in- 
cludes man and all his ways and works." If history, law, 
politics, morals, and political economy are merely branches 
of biology, we shall want new dictionaries indeed; and bi- 
ology will embrace about four-fifths of human knowledge. 
But this is not a question of language; for we here have 
Professor Huxley actually bringing religion within the range 
of physiological inquiry, and settling its problems by refer- 
ences to "diseased viscus." But the differences between us 
are a long story ; and since Professor Huxley has sought me 
out, and in somewhat monitorial tone has proposed to set me 
right, I will take an early occasion to try and set forth what I 
find paradoxical in his notions of the relations of Biology and 
Philosophy. 

I note a few special points between us, and I have done. 
Professor Huxley is so well satisfied with his idea of a 
"physical theory of moral phenomena," that he constantly 
attribute- that sense to my words, though I carefully guarded 
my language from such a con>truction. Thus he quotes 



242 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

from me a passage beginning, "Man is one, however com- 
pound,' ' but he breaks off the quotation just as I go on to 
speak of the direct analysis of mental and moral faculties by 
mental and moral science, not by physiological science. I 
say: "Philosophy and science" have accomplished explana- 
tions; I do not say biology; and the biological part of the 
explanation is a small and subordinate part of the whole. I 
do not say that the correspondence between physical and 
moral phenomena is an explanation of the human organism. 
Professor Huxley says that, and I call it materialism. Nor 
do I say that "spiritual sensibility is a bodily function." I 
say, it is a moral function; and I complain that Professor 
Huxley ignores the distinction between moral and physical 
functions of the human organism. 

As to the distinction between anatomy and physiology, if 
he will look at my words again, he will see that I use these 
terms with perfect accuracy. Six lines below the passage he 
quotes, I speak of the human mechanism being only ex- 
plained by a "complete anatomy and biology" showing that 
anatomy is merely one of the instruments of biology. 

"He might be surprised to hear" that he does not himself 
give an accurate definition of physiology. But so it is. He 
says: "Physiology is the science which treats of the func- 
tions of the living organism." Not so, for the finest spiritual 
sensibility is, as Professor Huxley admits, a function of a 
living organism; and physiology is not the science which 
treats of the spiritual sensibilities. They belong to moral 
science. There are mental, moral, affective functions of the 
living organism; and they are not within the province of 
physiology. Physiology is the science which treats of the 
bodily functions of the living organism ; as Professor Huxley 
says in his admirable Elementary Lessons, it deals with the 
facts "concerning the action of the body." I complain of 



REPLY TO CRITICISMS 243 

the pseudo-science which drops that distinction for a minute. 
He says : "The explanation of a physiological function is the 
demonstration of the connection of that function with the 
molecular state of the organ which exerts the function." 
That I dispute. It is only a small part of the explanation. 
The explanation substantially is the demonstration of the 
laws and all the conditions of the function. The explana- 
tion of the circulation of the blood is the demonstration of 
all its laws, modes, and conditions ; and the molecular ante- 
cedents of it are but a small part of the explanation. The 
principal part relates to the molar (and not the molecular) 
action of the heart and other organs. 

"The function of motion is explained," he says, "when 
the movements of the living body are found to have certain 
molecular changes for their invariable antecedents." Noth- 
ing of the kind. The function of bodily motion is explained 
when the laws, modes, and conditions of that motion are 
demonstrated; and molecular antecedents are but a part of 
these conditions. The main part of the explanation, again, 
deals with molar, not molecular, states of certain organs. 
"The function of sensation is explained," says Professor 
Huxley, "when the molecular changes, which are the in- 
variable antecedents of sensations, are discovered." Not a 
bit of it. The function of sensation is only explained when 
the laws and conditions of sensation are demonstrated. And 
the main part of this demonstration will come from direct 
observation of the sensitive organism organically, and by no 
molecular discovery whatever. All this is precisely the ma- 
terialism which T condemn; the fancying that one science 
can do the work of another, and that any molecular discovery 
can dispense with direct study of organisms in their organic, 
social, mental, and moral aspects. Will Professor Huxley 
say that the function of any Symposium is explained, when 



244 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

we have chemically analysed the solids and liquids which 
effect molecular change in the digestive apparatus? If so, 
let us ask the butler if he cannot produce us a less heady and 
more mellow vintage. What irritated viscus is responsible 
for the Materialist in Philosophy ? We shall all philosophise 
aright, if our friend Tyndall can hit for us the exact chemical 
formula for our drinks. 

It does not surprise me, so much as it might, to find Pro- 
fessor Huxley slipping into really inaccurate definitions in 
physiology, when I remember that hallucination of his about 
questions of science all becoming questions of molecular 
physics. The molecular facts are valuable enough ; but we 
are getting molecular-mad, if we forget that molecular facts 
have only a special part in physiology, and hardly any part 
at all in sociology, history, morals, and politics; though I 
quite agree that there is no single fact in social, moral, or 
mental philosophy that has not its correspondence in some 
molecular fact, if we only could know it. All human things 
undoubtedly depend on, and are certainly connected with, 
the general laws of the solar system. And to say that ques- 
tions of human organisms, much less of human society, tend 
to become questions of molecular physics is exactly the kind 
of confusion it would be if I said that questions of history 
tend to become questions of astronomy, and that the more 
refined calculations of planetary movements in the future 
will explain to us the causes of the English Rebellion and the 
French Revolution. 

There is an odd instance of this confusion of thought at 
the close of Professor Huxley's paper, which still more oddly 
Lord Blachford, who is so strict in his logic, cites with ap- 
proval. "Has a stone a future life," says Professor Huxley, 
"because the wavelets it may cause in the sea persist through 
space and time?" Well ! has a stone a life at all? because 



REPLY TO CRITICISMS 245 

if it has no present life, I cannot see why it should have a 
future life. How is any reasoning about the inorganic world 
to help us here in reasoning about the organic world ? Pro- 
fessor Huxley and Lord Blachford might as well ask if a 
stone is capable of civilisation because I said that man was. 
I think that man is wholly different from a stone ; and from 
a fiddle ; and even from a dog ; and that to say that a man 
cannot exert any influence on other men after his death, 
because a dog cannot, or because a fiddle, or because a stone 
cannot, may be to reproduce with rather needless affectation 
the verbal quibbles and pitfalls which Socrates and the 
sophists prepared for each other in some wordy symposium 
of old. 

Lastly, Professor Huxley seems to think that he has dis- 
posed of me altogether, so soon as he can point to a sym- 
pathy between theologians and myself. I trust there is great 
affinity and great sympathy between us; and pray let him 
not think that I am in the least ashamed of that common 
ground. Positivism has quite as much sympathy with the 
genuine theologian as it has with the scientific specialist. 
The former may be working on a wrong intellectual basis, 
and often it may be by most perverted methods ; but in the 
best types he has a high social aim and a great moral cause 
to maintain amongst men. The latter is usually right in his 
intellectual basis as far as it goes; but it does not go very 
far, and in the great moral cause of the spiritual destinies of 
men he is often content with utter indifference and simple 
nihilism. Mere raving at priestcraft, and beadles, and out- 
ward investments is indeed a poor solution of the mighty 
problems of the human soul and of social organisation. 
And the instinct of the mass of mankind will long reject a 
biology which has nothing for these but a sneer. Jt will not 
do for Professor Huxley to say that he is only a poor biologist 



246 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

and careth for none of these things. His biology, however, 
"includes man and all his ways and works." Besides, he 
is a leader in Israel; he has preached an entire volume of 
Lay Sermons; and he has waged many a war with theo- 
logians and philosophers on religious and philosophic prob- 
lems. What, if I may ask him, is his own religion and his 
own philosophy? He says that he knows no scientific men 
who "neglect all philosophical and religious synthesis." In 
that he is fortunate in his circle of acquaintance. But since 
he is so earnest in asking me questions, let me ask him to 
tell the world what is his own synthesis of philosophy, what 
is his own idea of religion? He can laugh at the worship 
of Priests and Positivists : whom, or what, does he worship ? 
If he dislikes the word Soul, does he think man has any- 
thing that can be called a spiritual nature? If he derides 
my idea of a Future life, does he think that there is anything 
which can be said of a man, when his carcase is laid beneath 
the sod, beyond a simple final Vale? Has he made such 
testamentary directions ? 

Space fails me to reply to the appeals of so many critics. 
I cannot enter with Mr. Roden Noel on that great question 
of the materialisation of the spirits of the dead ; I know not 
whether we shall be "made one with the great Elohim, or 
angels of Nature, or if we shall grovel in dead material 
bodily life." I know nothing of this high matter: I do not 
comprehend this language. Nor can I add anything to what 
I have said on that sense of personality which Lord Selborne 
and Canon Barry so eloquently press on me. To me that 
sense of personality is a thing of somewhat slow growth, 
resulting from our entire nervous organisation and our com- 
posite mental constitution. It seems to me that we can 
often trace it building up and trace it again decaying away. 



REPLY TO CRITICISMS 247 

We feel ourselves to be men, because we have human bodies 
and human minds. Is that not enough ? Has the baby an 
hour old this sense of personality ? Are you sure that a dog 
or an elephant has not got it ? Then has the baby no soul ; 
has the dog a soul ? Do you know more of your neighbour, 
apart from inference, than you know of the dog? Again, I 
cannot enter upon Mr. Greg's beautiful reflections, save to 
point out how largely he supports me. He shows, I think 
with masterly logic, how difficult it is to fit this new notion 
of a glorified activity on to the old orthodoxy of beatific 
ecstasy. Canon Barry reminds us how this orthodoxy in- 
volved the resurrection of the body, and the same difficulty 
has driven Mr. Roden Noel to suggest that the material 
world itself may be the debris of the just made perfect. But 
Dr. Ward, as might be expected, falls back on the beatific 
ecstasy as conceived by the mystics of the thirteenth century. 
No word here about moral activity and the social converse, 
as in the Elysian fields, imagined by philosophers of less 
orthodox severity. 

One word more. If my language has given any believer 
pain, I regret it sincerely. It may have been somewhat 
obscure, since it has been so widely arraigned, and I think 
misconceived. My position is this. The idea of a glorified 
energy in an ampler life is an idea utterly incompatible with 
exact thought, one which evaporates in contradictions, in 
phrases which when pressed have no meaning. The idea 
of beatific ecstasy is the old and orthodox idea; it does not 
involve so many contradictions as the former idea, but then 
it does not satisfy our moral judgment. I say plainly that 
the hope of such an infinite ecstasy is an inane and unworthy 
crown of a human life. And when Dr. Ward assures me 
that it is merely the prolongation of the saintly life, then T 
say the saintly life is an inane and unworthy life. The 



248 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

words I used about the "selfish" view of futurity, I applied 
only to those who say they care for nothing but personal 
enjoyment, and to those whose only aim is "to save their 
own souls." Mr. Baldwin Brown has nobly condemned this 
creed in words far stronger than mine. And here let us 
close with the reflection that the language of controversy 
must always be held to apply not to the character of our 
opponents, but to the logical consequences of their doctrines, 
if uncorrected and if forced to their extreme. 



XVI 

THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 

The central and pressing problem that awaits Christianity 
in the future, if we are to trust its official and orthodox 
teachers, is how shall it overcome that paralysis of religious 
faith which passes under a convenient solecism as Agnostic? 
Agnosticism is a vague and elastic phrase to describe the 
state of mind of large and growing sections of all cultured 
and thoughtful minds. It is almost assumed that the philoso- 
pher, the man of science, the man of great practical experi- 
ence, is more or less an Agnostic, until he declares himself 
a convinced Christian, and then the fact is widely proclaimed 
and heartily welcomed. I propose to ask whether a phase 
of mind so largely prevailing in the higher intellectual ranks 
is permanent, creative, final. Is Agnosticism a substantive 
religious belief at all? Can it grow into a religious belief? 
Can it supersede religious belief? 

It is not at all necessary to frame an exact definition of 
Agnosticism, a task that is far from easy. It may embrace 
a variety of different opinions, ranging through many types 
of Pantheistic and humanitarian belief, to the religion of the 
Unknowable, and so on down to a convenient screen for 
cynicism or a simple state of mere indiffcrency. The forms 
of Agnosticism may be almost as many as the forms of 
Theism, for it includes in the widest sense all those who 
consciously avow Ignorance to be the sum of their reflections 
on the origin of the Universe, the moral government of the 
world, and the future of the spirit after death. 

249 



250 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

In one sense this represents the conclusion of Auguste 
Comte; it was that of Charles Darwin, as he says, in a far 
less steady way ; it is certainly that of Herbert Spencer, and 
of most of those who rest in a philosophy of evolution. An 
eminent politician who was once pressed by an equally emi- 
nent critic to formulate his views on these, as most think 
them, all-important problems, replied: "My dear fellow, 
those are matters whereon I never could feel the slightest 
interest !" But this is not the true faith of the Agnostic — 
indeed, this eminent politician counted himself a Church- 
man. Thousands of busy men, men of pleasure, of ambition, 
the selfish, the vicious, and the careless, have no definite 
opinion and no perceptible interest. But they are not prop- 
erly Agnostics. To be undecided, indifferent, or callous is 
not to be convinced of one's own ignorance. The Agnostic 
proper is one who, having honestly sought to know, acquiesces 
in Ignorance and avows it as the best practical solution of a 
profound but impenetrable problem. 

Such is the mental attitude of a very powerful and grow- 
ing order of intelligences; who, if far from a majority in 
numbers, include a heavy proportion of the leaders of thought. 
Is this mental attitude a religious creed in itself ? Can it be- 
come the substitute for all other religious creeds ? 

The true Agnostic by conviction puts forward his igno- 
rance as the central result of his views about religion. A 
man may incline to the agnostic frame of mind, or he may 
be agnostic with respect to given metaphysical problems, 
without being fairly and truly an Agnostic by profession. 
The Agnostic takes his stand by principle on ignorance, just 
as the Protestant takes his stand on protesting against the 
errors of Rome, and makes that the badge and test of reli- 
gious belief. Many other churches, schools, and creeds ab- 
jure and reject the errors of Rome quite as much as Protes- 



THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 25 1 

tants can, without becoming Protestants. Deists, Atheists, 
Jews, Positivists, Buddhists, Mussulmans, and Brahmins 
reject the Pope and all his works quite as thoroughly as any 
Protestant. But it would be ridiculous to class them as 
Protestants, because they do not make the differing from 
the Church of Rome the central result of their views about 
religion. They are each properly described by the name 
which connotes the main body of their positive beliefs and 
practices. The Protestant is a Christian who protests against 
the Roman Catholic form of Christianity. The Atheist is one 
who protests against the theological doctrine of a Creator 
and a moral providence. The Agnostic is one who protests 
against any dogma respecting Creation at all, and who takes 
his stand deliberately on ignorance. All these put some 
specific denial into the forefront of their deepest convictions. 
But the Agnostic is far more distinctively a denier than 
the Protestant. In spite of this unhappy name, of which 
large sections of the Protestant world are heartily ashamed, 
the term Protestant still means something substantive, some- 
thing more than one who protests. Protestant still means 
Evangelical Christian. And so the name Dissenter implies 
much more than one who dissents from the Established 
Church. In spite of all the gibes and flouts of a great Ag- 
nostic, the "dissidence of Dissent" marks those who hold to 
a Biblical and Presbyterian type of Christianity, much as 
"the protestantism of the Protestant Religion" includes all 
types of Christians who look to the Bible rather than the 
Church of Rome as the source of faith. The Agnostic, as 
such, has no positive religious belief apart from the assertion 
of his ignorance, for if he had, he would be named from such 
belief. He is rather in the position of the Atheist, whose 
religious position is based on a denial of God, or of the 
Anarchist, whose political aim is directed towards the sup- 



252 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

pression of all government, not the establishment of any new 
government, socialistic or otherwise. The Agnostic, the 
Atheist, and the Anarchist concentrate their opinions re- 
spectively on opposition to creeds, opposition to Providence, 
and opposition to governments. 

Whatever the logical strength of Agnosticism as a philo- 
sophical position, as a moral and social creed, it must share 
the inherent weakness of every mere negation. In the realm 
of ideas, quite as much as in the realm of action, it is for 
ever true : — "He only destroys who can replace." The re- 
action in living memory against all forms of mere unbelief 
such as, from Voltaire to Richard Carlile, awakened the 
passions of our ancestors, shows no signs of abatement. The 
net result of the whole negative attack on the Gospel has 
been perhaps to deepen the moral hold of Christianity on 
society. Men without a trace of theological belief turn from 
the negative attack now with an instinctive sense of weari- 
ness and disgust. Just as even radicals and revolutionists 
look on the mania of pure anarchism as the worst hindrance 
to their own causes, so all who have substantive beliefs of 
their own, however unorthodox, find nothing but mischief 
in militant atheism. Auguste Comte found not only mis- 
chief, but folly, in accordance with his profound aphorism, 
"Atheism is the most irrational form of metaphysics" ; mean- 
ing that it propounds as the solution of an insoluble aenigma 
the hypothesis which 'of all others is the least capable of 
proof, the least simple, the least plausible, and the least use- 
ful. And although Comte, in common with the whole evo- 
lutionist school of thought, entirely accepts the Agnostic 
position as a matter of logic, he is as much convinced as any 
Ecumenical Council could be, that everything solid in the 
spiritual world must rest on beliefs, not negations ; on know- 
ledge, not on ignorance. 



THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 253 

So clear is this now that Mr. Herbert Spencer, the most 
important leader of the pure Agnostic school, has developed 
the Unknowable, about which nothing can be conceived or 
understood, into an "Infinite and Eternal Energy, by which 
all things are created and sustained." As every one knows, 
he has tried to make out the Unknowable to be something 
positive and not negative, active and not indifferent. So 
much so that his most important follower, Mr. John Fiske, 
of America, has declared that this Energy of Mr. Spencer's 
"is certainly the power which is here recognised as God" 
(Fiske's Idea of God, p. xxv.). This, however, is a subject 
which there is no need to pursue farther, at any rate until 
some one has appeared on this side of the Atlantic to con- 
tend that Mr. Spencer's idea of the Unknowable is certainly 
the power which is here recognised as God. I shall not 
farther argue this point. But this abortive paradox of an 
eminent thinker suffices to show how sterile a thing he recog- 
nises a bare Agnosticism to be. 

What is the source of all religion? Religion means that 
combination of belief and veneration which man feels for the 
power which exercises a dominant influence over his whole 
life. It has an intellectual element and a moral element. It 
includes both faith and worship — something that can be 
believed and something that can be reverenced. These two 
are fundamental, ineradicable facts in human nature. And 
what is more they are the supreme and dominant facts, which 
will ultimately master or absorb all others in the long run. 
For this reason what men ultimately believe and venerate 
— their religion — is very rightly assumed to be the charac- 
teristic fact in every phase of civilisation. We talk of the 
Mahometan, the Buddhist, the Catholic, the Pagan world; 
of the years of the Hegira, of Anno Domini. 

Our deepest and our widest thoughts, our earliest and our 



254 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

latest, about human nature, life, and the visible world, bring 
us always back to this: — "Here am I, and millions such as 
I am, surrounded, as it seems, in a huge universe of out- 
ward activity, distinct from it, but unable to exist an hour 
without it, able in many ways to act upon it, being acted 
upon by it in ways far greater and more constant. What is 
it? Is it well disposed to me, is it ill disposed? Is it dis- 
posed at all? Has it any will or any feeling at all? Is it 
the instrument of any being with will and feeling, and if so, 
of what being ? What is that relation between Man and the 
World?" 

Our hearts, like our brains, are ever stirring us with won- 
der, fear, love, admiration, and awe as we watch the forces 
around us, sometimes so cruel, so terrible, so deadly, some- 
times so lovely, so beneficent, so serene. All we enjoy, and 
love, all we can produce, or look for, all we suffer, and fear : 
pain, death, bereavement, life, health, and protection from 
torture, all alike come to us through the visible forces of the 
earth, or of beings on the earth. Our entire existence, ma- 
terial, emotional, practical, depends on them. Do they seek 
to help us or do they seek our ill, or are they absolutely in- 
different ? The individual by himself is as absolutely power- 
less in their presence as the minutest winged thing before the 
summer breeze which may gather into a tornado. But man 
in his helplessness and his blind terror or keen hope turns 
ever to the reason, and those who seem to reason best, say- 
ing — "Tell us something about this World in its relation to 
Man : tell us something of the living Spirit which is within 
it, or above it, or behind it : or if there be no such Spirit, tell 
us something about the workings of this world and how to 
get the good from it and avoid the evil." 

There is, however, much more than the World. There is 
Mankind, the most powerful, the most numerous, the most 



THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 255 

noble, the most universal living force visible upon the planet, 
through whom and in whom alone real life is possible for an 
individual. The individual man, when we think out the real 
meaning of civilised life, is just as completely dependent on 
mankind for everything he has, or does, or knows, or hopes 
for, as the infant is dependent on its parent or nurse for 
every hour of existence. Withdraw them and it perishes 
in a day. Withdraw from the mightiest intellect or the 
most potent character the co-operation of men past and 
present, and it sinks to the level of the fox or the tiger; and 
being neither so fleet nor so strong, would perish in less than 
a week. At every turn of human life, in activity, in thought, 
in emotion, there are always three powers perpetually in 
contact — the living soul which is thinking, acting, or feel- 
ing; the mass of the world outside man, touching him at 
every point; and between these two the sum of mankind 
past, present, and to come, through which alone he lives and 
acts. Whether the universe be itself living and conscious 
(Pantheism), whether it be self-existent and purely material 
(Atheism), or whether it be created and directed by a Su- 
preme mind (Theism) — all this is a matter of religious and 
philosophical speculation. But in any case there are always 
at least three elements — the man, mankind, and the world. 
The most profound thought, like the experience of every 
day, always comes back to this, for it is a matter of morality 
and of conduct quite as much as of intellect and sympathy. 
Morality, the very possibility of morality, depends on this: 
that a man feels the pressure over him of conditions. There 
can be no true duty without a sense of the limits, possibili- 
ties, and aim of human life. Life is an endless caprice, where 
there are no definite lines of duty, recognised as set by the 
order of things, and a possible end which effort can reach. 
And so the bare knowledge of the laws of nature, with no 



256 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

supreme conception of what nature means, such as can fill 
the imagination, with no dominant idea whereon the sym- 
pathy and the reverence can expand itself, is mere dust and 
ashes, wholly incompetent to sustain conduct or to give 
peace. The Agnostic is willing to trust to science as an 
adequate answer to the intellect, to ethics as a sufficient basis 
for conduct. He might as well trust in the rule of three and 
the maxims in a copybook to deal with the storms and trials 
of life. 

All that has been said by preachers and prophets from 
Moses and Isaiah down to Keble and Cardinal Newman as 
to the importance of religion to life, as to the paramount 
necessity of a central object of reverence, devotion, and faith, 
is not by one word in excess of the truth. On the contrary, 
it is still lamentably short of the truth, for it has been based 
by all theological preachers on a very narrow and imperfect 
conception of religion. Not one word of all this has ever 
been shaken by the infidel or Agnostic schools. It is true 
that they have not only shaken to their foundations, but in 
our opinion finally annihilated, the particular type of religion 
which theology presents, the actual doctrines, the assertion 
of supposed historic fact, the gratuitous assumptions which 
theological religion teaches under a thousand contradictory 
forms. But criticism has never shaken, nay, has never even 
addressed itself to weaken, the dominant place of religion in 
life. For some two centuries criticism has exhausted itself 
in battering down the doctrines and methods of the current 
religion. But not a rational argument has ever been put for- 
ward to show that religion of some kind is less necessary than 
before, less inevitable, less dominant. Agnosticism says to 
the Churches: "I decline to believe in your religion." But 
the necessity for some religion remains just as it did before. 
And until Agnosticism has told us what religion we are to 



THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 257 

believe, or why religion is henceforth superfluous, it will re- 
main the private opinion of isolated and cultivated minds in 
more or less comfortable surroundings. 

This explains the mysterious fact that, in spite of the hail- 
storm of destructive criticism which is incessantly poured on 
every bastion, fort, and outwork of the churches, they still 
continue to reply to the fire of the enemy, and are still full 
of enthusiastic defenders. "He only destroys who can re- 
place." And the Agnostic position is ex hypothesi a pure 
negation. The profound instinct of all healthy spirits recog- 
nises that a state of no-religion, of deliberate acquiescence in 
negation, of non-interest on principle in these dominant ques- 
tions, is weak, unworthy, even immoral. It is in vain that 
the man of science and the man of affairs ask to be left alone, 
to do their own work in their own way, to leave these ulti- 
mate problems to those whom they concern, or to those who 
care for them. The instinct of all good men and women 
feels that a man without a genuine religion — a man to 
whom the relation of Man to the World, Man to his fellow 
Men, is a mere academic question, a question to be put aside 
— is a source of danger and corruption to his neighbours 
and the society in which he lives; that selfishness, caprice, 
anti-social self-assertion, or equally anti-social indolence are 
his sure destiny, and his besetting weakness. The appeals 
and reproaches of the older religious creeds as to the folly 
and danger of stifling the eternal religious instincts, are as 
true and as powerful now as ever, though every single dogma 
of religion were shivered to dust. 

It would be idle indeed to attempt to repeat in the feeble 
tone of a far-away echo, the arguments, the appeals, the 
yearning cry of the great religious minds for thousands of 
years as to the hollowness of life, the feebleness of man, 
without an object of awe and love. The sayings of an army 



258 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of preachers crowd upon the memory as we think upon this, 
from Job, David, Solomon, and the prophets. "Happy is 
the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth 
understanding. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all 
her paths are peace." And so on, through the prophets to 
the words of the Gospel and of Paul, of Augustine's vision 
of the City that cannot be destroyed, and down to Gregory 
and Bernard, a Kempis and Bunyan, Bossuet and Taylor, 
Wesley and De Maistre, from countless voices, Jewish, 
Christian, Mussulman, Confucian, and Buddhist, Protestant, 
and Catholic, and Deist. However much they differ in the 
form, they all agree in this — the supreme importance of 
religion to man. Not a word of all this has ever been shaken : 
not a word of it has even been impugned. All that Agnos- 
ticism has done is to assert that Theology has not solved the 
religious problem. It has not offered a shadow of a sugges- 
tion as to what the solution is, nor has it cast a doubt on the 
urgency of the problem itself. 

Agnosticism is consequently a mere step, an indispensable 
step, in the evolution of religion, though, by its very nature, 
a step on which it is impossible to rest. Intellectually it is 
quite as impossible to remain an agnostic as politically it 
would be to remain an anarchist. And for precisely the 
same reason. Society is such that only the most vapid and 
uneasy spirit can permanently acquiesce in the negation of 
all government. And society is likewise such that only a 
dry, mechanical soul can permanently rest in the negation of 
all religion. A thousand commonplaces have shown that 
unless the first place in the imagination and the heart be 
duly filled, the mind and character are perpetually prone to 
improvise worthless ideals of love and reverence, under the 
force of which mind and character are liable to be violently 
carried away. 



THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 259 

The orthodox and the Agnostic view of religion are not at 
all the true antithesis one of the other. The only true antith- 
esis to a religion of figments is a religion of realities, not a 
denial of the figments. The Agnostic reply to the theo- 
logians is but half a reply, and a reply to the least important 
half. Orthodox theology asserts, first, the paramount need 
for religion, and next it asserts that this need is met by a 
particular creed and a specific object of worship. To the 
first of these assertions Agnosticism has no reply at all; to 
the second it replies "Not proven." The question is a double 
one, and no single answer can at all cover the ground. It is 
quite possible that the orthodox view might be partly right 
and partly wrong, and the Agnostic view may be partly 
right and .partly a mere blank. And this is just what has 
happened. The theologian is on ground unshaken whilst he 
contends that true religion is the sole guide of human life. 
The Agnostic is on ground as firm when he contends that 
theology concerns itself with a world where knowledge is 
impossible to man. But the Agnostic has yet to carry the 
argument to a world where knowledge is possible to man. 

The positivist point of view thus stands midway between 
theology and Agnosticism, recognising the strength of each 
and offering to both a modus vivendi, a basis of conciliation. 
It not only earnestly maintains all that theologians have ever 
urged as to the paramount place of religion, as to the uni- 
versal part of religion in every phase of life, as to its power 
to transfigure the individual man and human society, Large 
or small, but it vastly extends the scope of religion beyond 
the wildest vision of theology. On the other hand, it adopts 
without reserve the whole of the Agnostic logic as against 
the theological creeds, very greatly reinforcing it by making 
tlii- Agnostic logic the outcome of a complete philosophy of 
science, and an 1 heme of morality and society. 



260 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

No Agnostic reasoner can more inexorably insist on elimi- 
nating from thought and life whatever philosophy and science 
reject as "not proven." No theologian can more passion- 
ately insist on the wilderness that is left in the heart of the 
man and the life of society which is without the guidance of 
religion. 

Strangely enough, it is this latter point which theology in 
our day most miserably neglects. It is so strictly absorbed 
in its own special creed, that it abandons the defence of the 
infinitely greater cause, the meaning of religion, the relation 
of religion to life, conduct, happiness, and civilisation. All 
this is totally distinct from any particular creed, and may 
stand untouched by the downfall of a dozen creeds. So 
completely have theologians identified this eternal truth with 
their own formularies, that the Agnostic is allowed to sup- 
pose that when the formularies are disposed of the religious 
problem is at an end. And the result of it is, that the cause 
of religion as an institution is to-day seriously jeopardised 
by theologians, who are far more concerned about particular 
Books and sectarian dogmas than about the central principle 
of human life. 

It is therefore quite natural, however much it may sur- 
prise some, that the first task of Auguste Comte was to show 
how religion was a force, deeper, wider, and more omni- 
present than theology had ever described it; what are the 
eternal bases of religion in the heart and in society; and 
what are the indestructible elements of religion, and function 
of religion. It is not in the least a paradox, but a truth 
capable of easy proof, that no theologian in ancient or modern 
times, neither Paul nor Mahomet, neither Aquinas nor Ber- 
nard, neither Bossuet nor Calvin, neither Hooker nor Butler, 
have ever penetrated so profoundly into the elements, the 
function, and the range of religion in the abstract as does 



THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 26 1 

Auguste Comte. All this, his philosophical analysis of what 
religion can do for life and society, is entirely detached from 
any given religious creed, and it is quite as much applicable 
to Pagan, Mussulman, Catholic, or Calvinistic theology, as 
it is to the religion of the Fetichists, Buddhists, or Confu- 
cians. It is so because Comte was the first who exhaustively 
considered religion apart from any creed, on a social analysis 
of human nature and society, by the light of history, and 
social philosophy at once. When so viewed religion is found 
to have a meaning far more varied and certain than appears 
in the sacred writings of any confession, and to be capable 
of infinite applications to life, undreamt of yet by the most 
ecstatic mystics and the most ardent spirits of the Catholic 
or Protestant communions. 

It is not, however, the purpose of this essay to put for- 
wards Comte's answer to Theology, but merely to consider 
the Agnostic answer and the future of Agnosticism. The 
question of the place of religion as an element of human 
nature, as a force in human society, its origin, analysis, and 
functions, has never been considered at all from the Agnostic 
point of view. What eminent Agnostic has ever attempted 
to grapple with the problem, except by the unmeaning phrase 
of Mr. Spencer, that the business of religion is with the con- 
sciousness of a mystery that cannot be fathomed? This 
meagre formula about a very real and vast power is obviously 
only the flourish of a man who has nothing to say and who 
wishes to say something. Apart from this, what Agnostic 
has ever told us what religion is, what it ought to be, what 
part it plays in life and in civilisation? Agnosticism has 
not, in fact, carried out its own principles. Both Agnos- 
ticism and Atheism are -till so completely under the glamour 
of the older Theology and it- creeds, that they take it enough 
has been done for religion when some definite assertion has 



262 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

been formulated about the central theological dogmas, even 
though that definite assertion be a negation, as the atheist 
contends, or a mere assertion of ignorance, as the Agnostic 
contends. But when these have been asserted, the whole 
question of religion still remains open as a factor in human 
existence. If the Agnostic and the Atheist would fairly face 
this problem from the solid ground of human history, social 
philosophy, and moral analysis, and would entirely put aside 
all further thought of smashing theology hip and thigh, they 
would come to see that everything yet remains to be said 
and done in the matter of religion, assuming their specific 
denials to be perfectly logical and finally proved. 

In other words, Agnosticism as a religious philosophy per 
se rests on an almost total ignoring of history and social 
evolution. History and social evolution force all competent 
minds which grasp them to frame some positive type of 
religion, and to recognise the indestructible tie between reli- 
gion and civilisation. A strong mind, really saturated with 
the historical sense, turns from Agnosticism and Atheism, 
with the same weariness and pity with which it turns from 
the Law of Nature and the Rights of Man. They are all as 
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. History and a theory 
of social evolution based on history of social statics, compels 
us to think upon the past of religion, the need for religion, 
and the future of religion. 

Agnosticism is thus found to be simply the temporary 
halting-place of those scientific men who have not yet carried 
their scientific habits of mind into the history of humanity 
as a whole. It marks indeed the physicists, and the thinkers 
about physics, using physics in the widest sense as the study 
of Nature rather than of Man. It would be difficult to name 
a single known Agnostic who has given to history anything 
like the amount of thought and study which he brings to his 



THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 263 

knowledge of the physical world. The Darwins, the Hux- 
leys, the Tyndalls, have been absorbed in other labours 
which have left them no opportunity to enter on the vast 
field of universal history. They would, of course, admit 
that social science is quite as legitimate, quite as indispens- 
able to the human intellect, as is natural science; though 
they recognise its present condition as far less advanced and 
far more obscure. But the field of natural science is itself 
so gigantic that they may very fairly claim to limit their 
labours to that. In so doing, and missing in social science 
and in historical evolution the precision of proof which they 
justly seek for in physical studies, they are somewhat inclined 
to overrate the proportion which natural science bears to the 
whole field of knowledge and to forget that physical laws 
are only a part, and the smaller part, of science in the sum. 
Nothing is more common than to hear an eminent savant 
say — "So far as I understand anything of science," mean- 
ing by science our knowledge of nature exclusively, when 
perhaps he has given as little attention to social science, to 
history, and social evolution as the first man he meets in the 
street. As to the great discoverers in the physical realm, 
from the Darwins, the Huxleys, the Tyndalls, the Lyells, 
the Hookers, it would be preposterous to expect them to with- 
draw precious hours from their special pursuits; as Aristotle 
says, it would be ridiculous to ask a geometrician to reason 
persuasively, or to ask an orator to prove his points by ge- 
ometry. Mr. Spencer, on the other hand, is not a specialist 
observer, but a philosopher, and no English philosopher 
before him ha> ever so forcibly insisted on the supreme place 
held in the intellectual synthesis by social science. This, 
therefore, is all the more a disappointment to those who 
most admire his genius and most carefully study the de- 
velopment of his "Synthetic Philosophy," that he has not 



264 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

been able to turn his extraordinary powers of co-ordinating 
ideas to the systematic study of universal history. It is diffi- 
cult, indeed, to recall a passage in which he has contributed 
to this grand task of the future a single reflection that does 
justice to his eminent position. Yet, without a systematic 
conception of history, a synthetic philosophy of human nature 
is as utterly futile as a synthetic philosophy of physical nature 
would be without biology. 

We may now form some general forecast of the future 
course of Agnosticism. Agnosticism is a stage in the evolu- 
tion of religion, an entirely negative stage, the point reached 
by physicists, a purely mental conclusion with no relation to 
things social at all. It is a stage as impossible for a social 
philosophy to rest in as it is for a statesman to proclaim his 
policy to be "no law" and "no government." But if Agnos- 
ticism cannot rest as it is, there is not the slightest reason to 
suppose that it can go back. Agnosticism represents the 
general conclusion of minds profoundly imbued with the 
laws of physical nature, minds which find the sum of the 
physical laws to be incompatible with the central dogmas of 
theology. And since the physical laws rest on an enormous 
mass of experimental demonstration, and the dogmas of 
theology upon the unsupported asseverations of theologians, 
the Agnostic, as at present advised, holds by the former, and, 
without denying the latter, treats them as "not proven." But 
the laws of physical nature show no signs of becoming less 
definite, less consistent, or less popular as time goes on. 
Everything combines to show that natural knowledge is 
growing wider, more consolidated, more dominant year by 
year ; that the Reign of Law becomes more truly universal, 
more indefeasible, more familiar to all, just as the reign of 
supernatural hypotheses retreats into regions where the light 
of science fails to penetrate. 



THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 265 

Whatever, therefore, has fostered the Agnostic habit of 
mind in the past seems destined to extend it enormously in 
the future. And, when the entire public are completely 
trained in a sense of physical law, the Agnostic habit of 
mind must become the mental state, not of isolated students 
and thinkers, but of the general body which forms public 
opinion. There is no weak spot about the Agnostic position 
per se, no sign of doubt or rift in its armour, as a logical 
instrument. All that is objected to is, that it is simply one 
syllogism in a very long and complex process of reasoning, 
not that the syllogism itself has any vestige of error. The 
result is that the Agnostic logic shows every sign not of 
failure, but of ultimately becoming an axiom of ordinary 
thought, almost a truism or a commonplace, as minds are 
more commonly imbued with the sense of physical law. But 
to accept the Agnostic logic is not to be an Agnostic, any 
more than to accept the protest against the Papal infallibility 
or the Council of Trent is to be a Protestant. Hence, the 
more universal becomes the adoption of the Agnostic posi- 
tion, the more rare will Agnostics pure and simple become, 
and the less will Agnosticism be looked on as a creed. When 
Agnostic logic is simply one of the canons of thought, Agnos- 
ticism, as a distinctive faith, will have spontaneously dis- 
appeared. 

As social science and the laws of social evolution more 
and more engross the higher minds, and become the true 
centre of public interest, Agnosticism, the mere negation of 
the physicists, will have left the ground clear for the rise of 
a definite belief. That belief, of course, like everything 
destined to have a practical influence over men, must be 
positive, not negative. It musl also be scientific, not tradi- 
tional or fictitious. And it must further be human, in the 
sense of being sympathetic and congener to man, not ma- 



266 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

terialist and homogeneous with the physical world. Its 
main basis obviously must be social science, the larger, more 
noble, and dominant part of science in the sum. And its 
main instrument and guide will be the history of human 
evolution, which is to physical evolution all that man himself 
is to the animal series. To collect these suggestions in one, 
what we have is this. Agnosticism must be absorbed in a 
religious belief, for which it will have cleared the ground. 
That belief will necessarily have these characters. It will 
be at once positive, scientific, human, sociologic, and evolu- 
tionary or historical. 

These five characteristics are all, it is plain, distinctive 
marks of the system for the future that Auguste Comte pro- 
pounded as the religion of Humanity. Indeed, taken together, 
they would be a very good description of it. But it is no 
part of my present purpose to pursue that topic further, or 
to insist on Positivism as the inevitable solution of the problem. 
The object to which this essay is confined is to examine what, 
upon the principles of Agnosticism itself, would be the 
natural development of Agnosticism in the future, when its 
protest against the assumptions of theology shall have done 
its work, when antagonism to theology has become an ana- 
chronism, and when the world has realised how completely 
religion has yet to create its future. There is no reason to 
think that thoughtful Agnostics would very much dispute 
the general line of this reasoning. Very many Agnostics 
already have recognised in a general way, and for a distant 
future, some kind of humanitarian ideal as the ultimate 
basis of the religious sentiment. And this has been done 
most definitely by those Agnostics who are the most interested 
in social science, and especially by those who have the keenest 
grasp on the laws of historical evolution. Every student of 
social philosophy, who combines a knowledge of physical 



THE FUTURE OF AGNOSTICISM 267 

laws with a dominant interest in history, is already a hu- 
manitarian in embryo, though he choose to maintain an atti- 
tude of mental suspense on the religious problem as a whole. 

Further than this I have no wish now to carry the argu- 
ment. I am not in this essay advocating Positivism, but am 
examining the future of Agnosticism. Agnosticism, indeed, 
has no future, unless it will carry out its scientific principles 
to their legitimate conclusion. It offers no locus standi by 
itself. As Charles Darwin so pathetically tells us in his 
diary, it affords no permanent consolation to the mind, and 
is continually melting away under the stress of powerful 
sympathies. It destroys but it does not replace. 

That which alone can take the place of the mighty mys- 
teries and the grand moral drama created by the imagination 
of the prophets and priests of old is the final scheme of moral 
and social life which social science shall finally elaborate for 
man, which shall be the fruit of science as a whole, with phys- 
ical science for its foundation and social science for its main 
gospel, a scheme which shall be entirely positive and entirely 
human; and its main characteristic will be, that it explains 
the history of humanity as a whole and points to the future 
of humanity as the inevitable sequel of its history. In what- 
ever form such a view of religion may approve itself to the 
ages to come, it will only be Agnostic in the sense that it is 
ready with the Agnostic answer to all idle and irrelevant 
questions. 



XVII 
MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 

The publication by Mr. Huxley in one handsome volume 
of the controversial essays he has given to the world within 
seven years * will delight all admirers of his refreshing logic, 
and it affords to students of philosophy a satisfactory account 
of Scientific Agnosticism, a most interesting type of thought. 
As one who very deeply shares in that form of thought (though 
regarding the name Agnostic to be inadequate as a label), I 
have looked with expectation for this striking volume. With 
nine-tenths of its conclusions I am myself in sympathy, 
though I think there is more to be said on the same sub- 
ject, and perhaps in another tone. But, so far as it goes, it 
could not be better said, and it will carry ultimate conviction 
to many minds which were only irritated or alarmed by Mr. 
Huxley's isolated raids on the orthodox camp. 

There are passages in the volume in which I am myself 
most strangely misrepresented; and as to this I shall ask 
and obtain from Mr. Huxley (when he hears me) handsome 
amends. But as an old comrade-in-arms of his for some 
thirty years, I am far more interested in the success of his 
own Agnostic position, so far as it deals with theology and 
metaphysics on the negative side. Let it not be supposed 
that, because he does me some injustice personally, I fail to 
rejoice over the great service he renders to rational thought. 

1 Essays upon Some Controverted Questions. By Thomas H. Huxley, 
F.R.S. Macmillan and Co., 1892, 8vo. 625 pp. 

268 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 269 

Some years ago, when my old friend Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen 
and I had a round or two (with regulation gloves), he said 
to me, in his jolly way, "I meant to have had another turn 
with you, but I called to mind the old proverb — Dog should 
not bite dog." If Mr. Huxley sometimes forgets this first 
duty of the well-trained collie, I do not forget it. And so 
far from wishing to bite him, I shall show him presently that 
the substantial agreement between us is far larger than he 
imagines. Indeed, on the purely intellectual ground, the 
agreement, so far as he goes, is complete; nay more, I 
would claim him as in a fair way to become — I will not 
say a Positivist, for he hates that and all such names — but 
I will say a colleague with me and my friends in the work 
of popular scientific teaching to which we have long devoted 
ourselves. 

As evidence of this, we may cite the two elaborate and 
suggestive essays, the " Prologue," and the "Evolution of 
Theology," essays which together occupy more than a fifth 
of the whole volume, and which are not controversial. In 
the latter essay there are some most striking studies in the 
history of theology, treated simply as a "natural product of 
the operations of the human mind." All this is excellently 
worked out in the sense of the fundamental positive law of 
the passage of human conceptions from the theological into 
the positive stage, and is very much in the sense of those 
speculations on the rise of the theological spirit to which 
Comte first gave a philosophical basis. The whole of the 
essay on the "Evolution of Theology" is full of keen logic 
and ingenious learning; and it happens to interest me the 
more that it has a curious analogy to a course of Lectures on 
the Bihlr, given by Dr. Bridges, at Newton Hall, and ulti- 
mately published (in 1885). The two series of Mr. Huxley 
and Dr. Bridges entirely coincide — in the plea for the high 



270 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

place given to the Hebrew literature called the "Bible," 
along with resolute treatment of it as the equal of other 
bibles and books ; in the critical analysis of the Mosaic and 
Samuelistic chronicles ; in the explanation of the Jahveh and 
Elohistic cults ; in the lessons drawn from the Book of the 
Dead, and other Egyptian sacred writings. The "Evolution 
of Theology" is a sterling piece of modern historical philoso- 
phy, enriched by Mr. Huxley's personal experience when he 
was serving at sea amongst savage islanders. And he may 
be surprised to learn that, some time before his own pieces 
were published, our colleague, Dr. Bridges, had been teach- 
ing at Newton Hall, and had printed a volume of lectures 
containing almost precisely the same argument directed to 
the same end, that end being to show that theology is an 
evolutionary phase of the human mind, which fades away 
before positive science. 

The "Prologue," a piece of fifty-three pages, which has 
not been previously printed, is one of the very best essays 
in the volume which explains the origin and purpose of the 
rest. There is an eloquent and wise passage (pp. 36-37) 
which puts in a nutshell the fundamental idea of Positivism, 
that, whilst it is an impertinent 'sophism to deny the possible 
existence in the universe of Omniscience and Omnipotence, 
yet, until human life is longer, and our duties here are less 
pressing, mankind had better occupy itself with those things 
of which it has real demonstrative knowledge. That is all 
we ask; and it is the centre of Mr. Huxley's position, as it is 
of ours. And he proceeds to lay down twelve cardinal propo- 
sitions as axioms of all future philosophical and theological 
speculations. These axioms form together a basis for the 
doctrine of evolution, and they are framed in a thoroughly 
cautious and comprehensive spirit. We, for our parts, hail 
them as essential truths ; for, as Dr. Bridges well says in the 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 27 1 

Lectures I have just quoted (p. 18) — "The whole of Comte's 
philosophical structure is based on the conception of evo- 
lution." 

The two eager evolutionists, who show us in twenty pages 
how the entire animal world was evolved from a primordial 
cell, may be rebuked by seeing the caution of Mr. Huxley, 
who says (in axiom 8), "I think it a conclusion, fully justified 
by analogy, that, sooner or later, we shall discover the remains 
of our less specialised primitive ancestors in the strata which 
have girdled the less specialised equine and canine quadru- 
peds." And, again, he says (axiom 2), "It is a probable 
conclusion that, if we could follow living beings back to 
their earliest states, we should find them to present forms 
similar to those of the individual germ, or, what comes to 
the same thing, of those lowest known organisms which 
stand upon the boundary line between plants and animals. 
At present, our knowledge of the ancient living world stops 
very far short of this point." And he speaks with the same 
caution in the Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. viii. How dif- 
ferent is the scientific reserve of this from the wild guesswork 
of some who call themselves disciples of Darwin and Haeckel ! 

It is a minor question, on which we need not enlarge, 
whether Mr. Huxley does not somewhat overestimate the 
probability of our one day having full demonstration of the 
actual evolution of species, on any scale adequate to make it 
the general law of our planetary life. No doubt Comte, 
whose scientific knowledge was that of sixty years ago, and 
who knew the theory only in the form presented by Lamarck, 
underestimated the probability of our obtaining any evidence 
about the mutability and origin of species. We have often 
at Newton Hall shown that Comtc 's language was far too 
absolute on this and many such points. But this granted, 
and it being understood on all hands that, for purposes of 



272 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

human history, species are practically permanent, the prob- 
abilities as to the origin of species are matters of degree 
only, which do not affect the principle of evolution. All 
that I am now concerned with is this, that no Agnostic, no 
Darwinian, no Huxleian, no physicist of any school, can 
hold on to the doctrine of Evolution as the key to the changes, 
not only of Nature, but of Man, more stoutly than does the 
Posit ivist. 

As to this point, it may serve to make our position clearer 
if I remind Mr. Huxley that, as early as the year i860, I 
hailed C. Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) as "the latest 
triumph of science"; and from that day to this I have 
treated the absolute permanence of species as an untenable 
dogma. It makes no difference to me that Comte, with 
scientific data twenty or thirty years older, and absorbed as 
he was in the human rather than the cosmic history of our 
planet, considered the dogma (say in the period 1840-45) 
to be unshaken. But my friends and myself speaking at 
Newton Hall have on many occasions shown what has been 
done in science since then ; and I find that, lecturing in 1888, 
I said for myself that I was not aware of any scientific bar to 
the hypothesis that all organic forms (including men) may 
have been evolved out of some perfectly simple type or 
types — however little able we are at present to trace either 
the steps or the conditions of the process. So I can see 
nothing that need divide us on that point. 

I shall not touch on the Biblical and ecclesiastical polem- 
ics with which this volume is so largely occupied. The 
crushing and braying in a mortar of Biblical geology, Mosaic 
cosmogony, Gospel miracles, mediaeval superstition, clerical 
arrogance, casuistical unveracity, and orthodox muddledom, 
is most diverting and highly instructive. Some may think 
that the untying of this knot was hardly worth the interven- 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 273 

tion of Mr. Huxley's superior powers. And some may 
doubt if it were worth while to make mincemeat of such 
poor old idols. But perhaps the work has still to be done. 
The hold upon the public mind of venerable superstitions 
must be shaken. And the fact that bishops, statesmen, 
Church congresses, eminent Catholics, principals and other 
dignitaries, should stake the future of Christianity upon some 
cosmical myth or the illegality of a herd of swine, is con- 
clusive proof that these incredible delusions still have to be 
pricked. The pricking of these mythic bubbles and illicit 
swine is a very amusing business. And many readers will 
find it as pleasant a pastime as it evidently was to Mr. Huxley. 

But to me and my friends the central interest of Mr. Hux- 
ley's book lies in his explanation of what he means by Ag- 
nosticism. The account he gives of it is clear, complete, and 
from a philosophical point of view, quite satisfactory. He 
has every right to put his own meaning on the phrase, since 
he invented it himself for his own position (p. 356). And 
that position is, the habit of mind to profess belief in such 
conclusions only as are demonstrable by adequate evidence. 
So far this is simply the scientific habit of mind. But Mr. 
Huxley goes on and explains that he formed and used the 
term Agnostic to describe his own attitude of mind with 
regard to such questions as the origin of the universe, Provi- 
dence, the nature and immortality of the soul, and the like. 
Upon these high questions, on which theologies and meta- 
physics dogmatise so much, the Agnostic makes no profes- 
sion, because he has no evidence. He can find nothing of 
a scientific kind to justify a conclusion. He neither asserts 
nor denies; he simply suspends his judgment; he docs not 
know; and therefore lie says nothing. 

This is undoubtedly the attitude of true philosophy and 
real science; but it i.^ also the attitude of honesty, morality, 



274 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

and spiritual truthfulness. It is hardly needful to say that 
it is the attitude uniformly insisted on by myself and my 
colleagues, for it is simply one side of the medal of Posi- 
tivism itself. Positivism to me and to the rest of us simply 
means, as logic, the habit of resting on those conclusions 
which are demonstrable by adequate evidence. Of course, 
this involves the refusal to profess any conclusion which is 
not so demonstrable. And thus Agnosticism, in Mr. Hux- 
ley's sense, is merely the converse or complement of scientific 
Positivism in Comte's sense. Both amount to the same 
thing; the difference is simply in the side from which we 
view it. The one teacher says: "Believe that which you 
can scientifically prove." The other says : " Do not profess 
to believe what you cannot so prove." The difference in 
these two is simply one of tone, manner, or form. So that, 
as a simple matter of logic, I can claim to be an Agnostic as 
complete as Mr. Huxley, and indeed for upwards of forty 
years and long before the term was invented. 

Why then do I not accept the name of Agnostic myself? 
For precisely the same reason that Mr. Huxley does not 
accept the name of "Infidel." I have no particular objection 
to the name, except that it is inadequate as a description; 
nor have I the least hesitation in saying that, on the great 
theological problems, the Agnostic attitude is that which I 
adopt. I protest against the errors of Rome, but I greatly 
object to being called a Protestant. I dislike all spiritualistic 
nonsense ; but I object to being known as an Anti-Spiritualist. 
I cannot profess any form of theology; but I refuse to be 
called an Atheist. If I am to bear a label, I prefer it to 
connote something which I do believe rather than something 
which I do not believe — something about which I feel sure 
rather than something about which I have no opinion. When 
Mr. Huxley is called "Infidel," he very properly asks — 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 275 

"Disbeliever in what?" So when we are asked to call our- 
selves " Agnostic," we may fairly ask — "As not knowing 
what?" On the whole, it is far better to describe ourselves 
positively rather than negatively. When Mr. Huxley speaks 
with his clerical antagonists in the gate, he says: "I do not 
know anything certain about these high matters, and so I 
do not profess any belief." When we Positivists are in the 
same place, we say : "We profess belief in a creed which we 
can fairly prove." The difference is not great; but I much 
prefer the Positive to the Agnostic formula. 

Mr. Huxley is very careful to explain that Agnosticism is 
not a creed ; that Agnostics have no creed, and by the nature 
of the case, cannot have any, for Agnosticism is a method, 
the rigorous application of a single principle. It is not, he 
says, a distinctive faith ; it has not the least pretension to 
be a religious philosophy. And, controverting an article 
of mine, he banters me, with some humour, for having 
pointed out how very little Agnosticism has to offer either as 
a distinctive creed, or as a religious philosophy, or even as a 
stage in the evolution of religion. I am afraid that I did sup- 
pose Agnosticism to be generally adopted as the symbol, or 
label, of a certain religious philosophy, or at least as the 
equivalent of a religious philosophy; that it amounted to a 
substitute for certain theological dogmas, and formed a sort 
of rough solution of the theological problem. 

I still believe that this is the meaning of prominent Agnos- 
tics, as it apparently was that of C. Darwin in his auto- 
biography. But I am very happy to withdraw any such 
suggestion in the case of Mr. Huxley. Let me point out that 
in treating of Agnosticism, I did not specifically deal with 
Mr. Huxley. He has rather an odd controversial trick of 
crying out too often, "That's me !" If a preacher happens 
to say, "These men of science say so and so," Mr. Huxley 



276 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

starts up and cries, "No, I did not !" If the preacher says, 
"Evolution asks us to believe this or that," Mr. Huxley in- 
terrupts him with the remark, "I don't ask you to believe 
anything!" However, I very willingly agree that, in Mr. 
Huxley's own view, Agnosticism is not a creed, not a dis- 
tinctive faith, not a religious philosophy, not a stage in the 
evolution of religion. And I beg to tender him my hand- 
some apologies for having suggested something about Ag- 
nosticism which it seems does not apply to Agnosticism as 
understood by Mr. Huxley ; and as we are both agreed that 
such a claim, if made by Agnostics, would be a very poor 
claim, there remains no more to be said. 

Agnosticism is not a patent medicine on which Mr. Hux- 
ley has a royalty; but it suits me perfectly to adopt his 
version. But then I would point out what a limited field 
this Huxleian Agnosticism covers ; how essentially negative, 
jejune, and provisional a resting-place it is in the wide field 
covered by the eternal problems of religion, philosophy, 
morality, and psychology. Preachers, moralists, philoso- 
phers, poets, educators, men, women and children, parents 
and kinsfolk, those who are trying to comfort, those who 
are seeking to amend, those who mourn, and those who fear 
— all around us are ever crying out : What is the relation 
of Man to the Author of the world? Is there, or is there 
not a moral Providence on earth ? Is there a supreme power 
here ; is it good, is it wise, is it loving, or is it indifferent to 
man and alien to man ? Have I an immortal soul and what 
becomes of it when I die? Does right conduct on earth 
concern any Unseen Power at all : will our good or bad done 
in the flesh be counted to any of us beyond the earthly life ? 
These questions are being asked in public and in secret, 
hour by hour, by all our fellow-beings, often with tears and 
groans and agonies of hope, fear, and yearning. And the 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 277 

one answer of the Agnostic is, "I have no evidence on the 
subject, and I believe nothing of which I have no evidence." 

A very sensible answer so far as it goes; but it does not 
go far enough. A good resting-place for an inquirer, for 
one who is learning, forming his opinion, and gathering 
knowledge. But it is not wide enough for a teacher in Israel, 
for a leader of men and the founder of a school of thought, 
for the vanquisher of bishops, cardinals, principals, and all 
kinds of theologians, lay and clerical. A man who sweeps 
away with such trenchant logic and varied learning so many 
ecclesiastics and their formularies, so many theological dog- 
mas, who cuts down so much philosophical common form, 
so many popular traditions and prejudices very dear to 
millions, and with so rich and pathetic a history, — such a 
man is expected to have something positive to supply as well 
as something negative to destroy. A review in a philosoph- 
ical organ wound up its notice of this book with the say- 
ing that, " Agnosticism is an exhausted receiver." And when 
this victorious analysis has cut down churches, creeds, articles, 
sacred books, and hopes of heaven, men and women ask for 
something more than "an exhausted receiver." 

Let mc make my meaning quite clear. Of course on these 
matters we give the same answer, that we know nothing ; and 
if Mr. Huxley has nothing more to say than that he knows 
nothing, he is quite right to say no more. Indeed, he would 
be most blameworthy if he allowed it to be supposed that 
he would or could say more. But then he is taking up a 
very limited and subordinate ground in this might}- debate, 
a ground which, as I told him before, he cannot expect to 
hold long. Agnosticism, he says, has no (reed, no philoso- 
phy of religion, has nothing to do with religion more than 

with painting. But the great issue now is: What is to be 
our creed? What is the philosophy of religion? What is 



278 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

religion to be? That is the issue faced by all Mr. Huxley's 
opponents, by bishops, cardinals, statesmen, dignitaries, and 
in my humble way by myself. And it is the issue on which 
guidance is asked by millions and millions, and on which 
guidance will continue to be asked for generations to come. 
And Mr. Huxley's answer to all is simply, " Go to, I am an 
Agnostic: I tell you I know nothing!" That may satisfy, 
for a season, some learned men, occupied in special research, 
but it cannot satisfy the body of mankind. 

Mr. Huxley has a good deal of his harmless fun about my 
"tripod" and the "prophetical business" and so forth. I 
can assure him, it needs very humble prophetical gifts to 
see that this will not do. So I tell him again, as I told him 
before, that Agnosticism is a stage, a negative stage, in the 
evolution of religion — a sound, essential, inevitable stage, 
just as was the agnosticism of Descartes and of Bacon, when 
they swept away the cobwebs of scholastic and Aristotelian 
metaphysics, before they reached the tabula rasa for their 
own constructions. But they did not stop at the tabula rasa. 
And the world will never rest at a tabula rasa or any nega- 
tion, or profession of ignorance. The world wants some- 
thing positive ; profession of knowledge ; a creed if you like, 
a religion, a theory and a practice of religion. It needs very 
little familiarity with history, and social institutions, and the 
spiritual and moral problems of society, to be profoundly 
convinced that these eternal problems can never be put off 
until they are satisfactorily answered, till the moral and 
spiritual demands of the human soul receive intelligible as- 
surance, until the great teachers, the moral guides, the 
spiritual censors of society can provide us with certain and 
searching truths in which we can trust with complete enthu- 
siasm, until they cease to put us off with blank professions 
of ignorance. 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 279 

It was all very well for Mr. Darwin to say quietly that he 
thought he was on these matters an Agnostic. But Charles 
Darwin did not deal with the philosophy of religion, nor 
engage in trenchant theological and biblical controversies. 
He never set his back against the rock like Roderick Dhu, 
and with his single claymore and target met a score of enemies 

— premiers, dukes, cardinals, bishops, preachers, doctors, and 
lay critics of all churches and every school. To have done 
this implies the obligation of rinding some final solution to 
problems of which the doughty chief has destroyed so many 
accepted answers. Is there not some consciousness of this 
when Mr. Huxley accepts and uses the term Agnosticism? 
To call oneself an Agnostic may be reasonable enough when 
challenged on some specific point. If asked to translate a 
passage of Genesis from the original, not having Mr. Hux- 
ley's knowledge of the Semitic languages, I should admit 
myself to be an agnostic as to Hebrew. But "Agnosticism" 

— with a big A — implies something much more. It sug- 
gests a scheme of belief on a set of fundamental dogmas of 
human life; and so Mr. Huxley seems to admit when he 
says (p. 450) that the application of it results in the denial 
or suspension of judgment on sundry great ecclesiastical 
propositions. It is so taken in popular language. And, 
therefore, it does seem inconsistent to say that Agnosticism 
is not a creed, and has no more to do with religion than it 
has with painting, when we find the author of the term ad- 
mitting that it results in the denial of, or at least suspension 
of, judgment concerning all the really crucial problems of 
religion and of religious philosophy. 

Here is a portly octavo volume of 625 pages, almost the 
whole of which i> occupied with the Agnostic view concerning 
the Scriptures, Church doctrines, miracles, and theology. 
Throughout it we cannot find any distinct and positive assUT- 



280 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

ance as to a moral Providence, as to the will or nature of any 
supreme Power or Force, as to the state of man or any part 
of man after death, as to the nature of sin, or as to any pun- 
ishment or reward beyond those of this life. Yet these are 
the grand and perennial questions which the thinking world 
to-day is asking, and which Mr. Huxley's clerical antagonists 
profess to answer. Now I should like to ask him a few ques- 
tions thereon myself, and I challenge him to give me a straight- 
forward answer with as little chaff about "tripods" and "pon- 
tiffs" as he can command. 

i. Has Mr. Huxley himself any mental bias, pro or con, 
with reference, let us say, to Creation, Providence, Immor- 
tality, and Future Punishment? 

2. Does he think it of no consequence to human life or to 
society, whether people have any formed opinion on these 
problems or not? Are the questions themselves idle and 
trivial from the point of view of morality and civilisation ? 

3. Does he think that mankind will cease to ask these 
questions, simply by being told that Mr. Huxley and other 
men of science can give no answer ? 

It will not do for him to reply, "I am merely a 'man of 
science' [by which, by the way, he seems always to mean a 
physicist] ; and I am not to be questioned about my personal 
beliefs." On the contrary, he is a teacher in Israel, the founder, 
as he claims, of "Agnosticism," with a big A; the Thomas 
Aquinas of modern Agnosticism ; the Charles Martel of bish- 
ops, priests, and deacons; the Athanasius contra mundum 
ecclesiasticum. Before his mighty battle-axe down go 
churches, creeds, articles, bibles, and the venerable super- 
stitions of the people. And they cry aloud with one accord 
to him, "What, then, do you believe about these things; 
what are we to believe ? " His answer is, " Nothing, nothing ! " 
That is to say, Mr. Huxley has for many years past devoted 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 28 1 

much of his great powers to instruct the public on vital prob- 
lems which, above all others, concern the happiness and virtue 
of mankind and the progress of society, without having any 
conclusion to offer himself, and without making known even 
the bias of his own mind. It needs neither a prophet nor 
a conjurer to assure us of this : first, that so purely negative 
a proceeding can have but a very partial success anywhere; 
and secondly, that in the long run the world will turn to those 
who have conclusions. The future must lie with those who 
have the patience to work out something that they can know, 
and will turn aside from those whose religion is summed up 
in this — that they do not know. 

No reader of mine, I hope, will fall into the trap of imagin- 
ing that Positivists have no more to say on these questions 
than Agnostics, for that would be an entire misconception. 
In the first place, the essence of Positivism is : — Put your 
trust in that of which you have scientific evidence ; which is 
a different maxim from the converse. Beware of the super- 
stitions for which you have no such evidence. It is a different 
thing from the moral, social, and philosophical point of view, 
though, logically, it is the converse of it ; and it is a more soul- 
satisfying and restful maxim. The Positivist maxim includes 
and implies the Agnostic maxim. But the Agnostic maxim 
does not imply the Posit i\iVt ; for sundry Agnostics have got 
so much into the habit of bewaring of all superstition that they 
put their trust in little evidence but that of their own senses. 
But, more than this, the entire scheme of Positivist education, 
scientific, moral, and religious, i-- directed to increase the 
sense of the paramount importance of positive knowledge 
and human and mundane interests, which arc vastly more 
than can fill all our possible hour- of life Up to this point, 

of course, the Agnostic may be willing also to go. Bu1 the 
Positivist offer- a real and demonstrative answer to these 



282 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

questions in what is at once a scientific and also a religious 
scheme — (i) as to the relation of Man to the World; (2) as 
to a real and (relatively) supreme Power over his life ; (3) as 
to a human and moral Providence, truly guiding the destinies 
of mankind and of each human being; (4) for a real and 
rational worship; and (5) as to a subjective life after death. 
All this I need not here enlarge upon, for after all I refer to it 
merely to guard against a possible argumentum ad hominem, 
and it does not affect one way or the other the Agnostic posi- 
tion. And for any further explanation of the Positivist view 
thereon, I will simply refer to my own published writings, 
and in particular to my former volume, The Creed of a Lay- 
man. 

Now I shall not take up space in noticing sundry verbal 
fallacies in which Mr. Huxley seeks to entangle me (pp. 364- 
377, etc.). Here all his charming humour breaks out; and, 
as I love a jest myself, I do not grudge him any fun that he 
can derive from charring me about pontiffs, Comtists, Church 
of Comte, popedoms, adoring idols, and the like. It is all 
merely his ignorance of all that I have been doing and saying. 
And no doubt he will be surprised to learn that no one has 
repudiated the name of Comtist, or the pontifical business, 
or adoring anything more than I have done myself at Newton 
Hall. It is not misrepresentation — such a stickler for ve- 
racity could not misrepresent — but pure ignorance ; regret- 
table, singular ignorance, and, as I shall presently show, 
not altogether excusable ignorance. As to the fallacies, I 
cannot find that I have made any. My phrases may not have 
been quite so exact as they ought to have been. But then 
I am not a master of language as Mr. Huxley is, and he should 
make allowances for us inarticulate bipeds, if our meaning is 
fairly clear. 

I think he could have understood me if he had tried. 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 283 

He quarrels with me for speaking of Agnosticism as " a purely 
mental conclusion," and asks triumphantly, Are any conclu- 
sions not mental ? Of course, I meant to say that Agnosticism 
was a logical process, and not a social creed — and it seems 
this is exactly what Mr. Huxley says it is. I said that Ag- 
nosticism was "the mere negation of the physicist." No! 
says Mr. Huxley ; it also destroys superstitious ideas about 
Roman history and the Homeric poems. It is surely a novel 
idea that Wolf and Niebuhr were the founders of Agnosticism. 
The world is hardly prepared for such an extension of the 
term. But Agnosticism in Mr. Huxley's hands seems to in- 
clude everything that is wise, just, true, beautiful, or good. 
I spoke of "Agnostic logic" becoming a "canon of thought," 
as I certainly think it will. But the phrase has "bewildered" 
Mr. Huxley, who begs me to clear up this enigmatical sen- 
tence. Well, then, it means that the reasoning called Ag- 
nostic by him, and called positive by me (viz. of trusting only 
in scientific demonstration), will become a universal rule of 
thinking to everybody. I quite agree that it ought, and that 
it will; and I hold my sentence to be sound in thought and 
clear in expression. But enough; Mr. Huxley and I have 
both much better things to do than to engage in bouts of idle 
word-chopping. 

A far more useful thing will be to show him how very much 
nearer together we are in substantial things than he supposes 
and represents us to be. The churchmen and dissenters 
have lately been meeting at Grindelwald, under the shadow of 
the Monk, the Giant, the Horn of Darkness, and the Peak of 
Horror, to vow eternal love and peace and to cement an 
alliance with a holy kiss. Dogmatism and Bibliolatry have 
kissed one another; and a beautiful Christian Eirenikon 
has been effected. Why cannot we Agnostics (for on the 
negative side we are all as good Agnostics as Mr. Huxley), 



284 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

why cannot we kiss and be friends ? I can assure him that our 
underlying religious ideas are the same; we have the same 
ideals, the same hopes, and the same ends ; and his fears about 
our ritualism, our popery, our Comtism, our idolatry, are 
figments without any foundation at all. I have hitherto been 
trying to show how negative, arid, and entirely uninspiring a 
thing Agnosticism must be, when regarded as covering the 
field of religious beliefs and hopes. Mr. Huxley replies to 
us that Agnosticism, as he understands it, is simply a logical 
process and does not pretend to cover the field of philosophy 
or religion. So be it ! But in the present volume we may trace 
indications of some positive belief of his own on the religious 
problems. They are put in rather a guarded, tentative, al- 
most a shy manner, but still they are distinct enough. Now it 
may surprise him, but it is true, that these essential ideas of 
his about religion are practically those of myself and my 
friends. We put them in a somewhat more systematic way. 
Our evolution has reached a stage beyond Agnosticism. 
But (I say it as a bond of peace and union and not in any 
spirit of offence) Mr. Huxley is a rudimentary Positivist. 
Of course he is more than a rudimentary Positivist on the 
scientific and philosophical field; but I mean that on the 
religious ground he is a rudimentary Positivist, inasmuch as 
he professes at bottom our own essential beliefs. His 
twelfth canon ("Prologue," p. 48) is this, "The highest con- 
ceivable form of human society is that in which the desire to 
do what is best for the whole, dominates and limits the action 
of every member of that society." That is simply what we 
mean by the Religion of Humanity: neither more nor less. 
And the canons 9, 10, 11, and 12 are simply propositions in 
the same sense. If all this is pure Agnosticism, then surely 
Agnosticism is something more than a logical process, and it 
has more to do with religion than it has with painting. He 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 285 

says (p. 366) that religion " ought to mean simply the reverence 
and love for the ethical ideal, and the desire to realise that 
ideal in life, which every man ought to feel." Well, that is 
exactly what I mean by religion. Worship of Humanity has 
to me no other sense or meaning. I mean no more than 
reverence and love for all that is good and great in the social 
organism. A page or two further on comes this remarkable 
passage (p. 371): — 

That a man should determine to devote himself to the service of 
humanity — including intellectual and moral self-culture under that 
name; that this should be, in the proper sense of the word, his religion 
— is not only an intelligible, but, I think, a laudable resolution. And 
I am greatly disposed to believe that it is the only religion which will prove 
itself to be unassailably acceptable so long as the human race endures. 

But this is simply all we ask or profess. The service of 
humanity, including mental and moral self-culture, is the only 
religion which will permanently endure. So says Mr. Hux- 
ley the Agnostic — so say we all. This is precisely how we 
describe the religion of humanity — the Service of Man, as 
our colleague, J. Cotter Morison, well named it. We mean 
nothing further ; we have no reserve, or arriere pensee. This 
is the belief and the resolution which we Positivists, in New- 
ton Hall or in Paris, profess, explain, teach, and practise. 
Mr. Huxley poked some mild fun at me for expressing an 
opinion about the future of Agnosticism, and talked of my 
" tripod" and prophetic assumption. And here he mounts 
the tripod with a vengeance and prophesies as to the future of 
religion "so long as the human race endures." I have never 
gone so far as that. I simply say that the service of humanity 
will serve as the religion of many generation- to come. Saul 
is indeed amongst the prophets! And when the "pontiff" 
of Agnostic i>m mounts his evolutionary tripod, it is to pro- 



286 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

claim in prophetic strain that the Religion of Humanity will 
triumph, whilst the human race endures. 

Mr. Huxley's characteristic modesty leads him to under- 
value his own gifts of prophecy. When he introduces (in the 
" Prologue," p. 40) his own twelve canons or "body of estab- 
lished truths," as he calls them (and I think the proposi- 
tions are all sensible and useful enough), he tells us "that all 
future philosophical and theological speculations will have to 
accommodate themselves to some such." Surely that is a little 
bold, though I say it as a partisan of his views myself. Comte 
has been charged (and I am free to admit not without reason) 
with excessive confidence in his own predictions. But I 
doubt if there is anything in Comte's most astounding claims 
that quite comes up to the tremendous prophecy that all fu- 
ture philosophical and theological speculations will have to 
lie on the Procrustean bed of Mr. Huxley's twelve canons 
about primordial germs, the Mesozoic epoch, Quaternary 
man, the evolution of morality, and so forth. The twelve 
canons are good ; but I bow my head in awe before such sub- 
lime confidence in their future. 

We will hold in Newton Hall a special conclave, wherein 
I will abdicate and cede to him my prophetic tripod and my 
triple tiara. 

No doubt he thinks that a gulf separates him from us; 
but that is his mistake. He does not know us, and he has run 
off with some ribald jest he has read in a journal. After 
the passage I have just cited (from p. 371) comes this, "But 
when the Positivist asks me to worship Humanity — that is 
to say, to adore the generalised conception of men as they ever 
have been and probably ever will be — I must reply that I 
could just as soon bow down and worship the generalised con- 
ception of a wilderness of apes," and so forth. Well, no 
Positivist ever did ask anybody to adore anything or anybody, 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 287 

to bow down to anything or anybody, to worship any general- 
ised conception of men. The whole idea is a hallucination, 
a piece of horseplay or caricature invented by ubiquitous press 
jesters, and swallowed as truth by the stern Agnosticism of 
Mr. Huxley. 

And he talks about " deifying" men, about " divinity 
hedging no man," about no spark of " divinity" in an indi- 
vidual, the "god-like splendour" of humanity, the " vacant 
shrine" of Christ, etc., etc. All this is mere caricature. 
For years and years, so far as I am concerned, I have pub- 
licly abjured and protested against the name of "Comtist," 
such phrases as "the religion," or "Church," or "doctrines" 
of Comte, any idea of "adoring" anything or anybody, any- 
thing about the divinity, or divine attributes, or ideal perfection 
of humanity or anything human, and, in particular, against 
the idea that we are expected to believe a thing because it is 
so said in Comte's books. I have said a thousand times that 
by "religion" I mean (as Mr. Huxley does) the service of hu- 
manity; by "humanity" the permanent and collective power 
of the human organism: by "positivism" the habit of trust- 
ing to scientific demonstration and the general good of the race: 
by "worship" the sense of gratitude, love, and reverence 
which men feel for their country, their family, their benefac- 
tors — somewhat higher in degree, but not differing in kind. 
All this nonsense about "adoring" Humanity is merely the 
sneer of some idle curate in the Saturday Review. 

I will now take leave to prove this by citing chapter and 
verse; and I am forced to follow Mr. Huxley's example of 
troubling the reader with some autobiographic facts and ex- 
t rail -from my own published discourses. I cannot help it. Mr. 
Huxley constantly criticises me by name, cites pieces of mine, 
argues against them, and then bold- me up to public ridicule 
as pontiff, prophet, general humbug, and counterpart of Joe 



288 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Smith, the Mormon. When I wrote on Agnosticism I did 
not address Mr. Huxley; but in his essay with that title he 
names and he quotes me, and I believe I am the only Positiv- 
ist whom he does name or quote throughout his present book. 
It is consequently my teaching, my words, and my writings 
which are attacked, and it is I who am supposed to behave 
in the grotesque way he describes. It will not do for him 
to cite Comte, because, as I say, I am not bound by Comte's 
books, nor by his injunctions. Nor will it do to quote others 
whom he may choose to call "Comtists." He has charged 
me with doing and saying certain absurd things. And I shall 
now proceed to convince him, as he is an honourable and vera- 
cious man, that he therein unwittingly does me grievous wrong. 
I am no "Comtist." I wholly repudiate the phrase, and 
regard it as an unfair nickname. And that because I and 
those who work with me refuse to be bound by Comte's 
writings as such, much as we value the principles they contain. 
For instance, in 1885, I was asked to prepare an address for 
the Positivists of New York, and these are some sentences 
extracted from that which I sent : — 

Positivism means the acceptance, upon conviction, of positive truths, 
all, at any time, capable of demonstration. Positivism is a French 
word, meaning the habit of trusting to what has been and can be proved. 
To translate it freely, it means the scientific faith; the habit of resting 
our lives and our beliefs on solid, provable certainties that we can under- 
stand and teach to others. Hence it excludes all blind trust in authority, 
and all cut-and-dried formulas. 

Now I ask Mr. Huxley if this "allocution" has "the Papal 
flavour" about it. Again, I wrote further on : — 

We do not ask a convinced Positivist to accept all that may be found 
in Comte's writings. That, we think, would be treason against Positivism 
and scientific proof. It will be enough if a convinced Positivist intelli- 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 289 

gently accepts the great Positivist precepts, with all that they imply. 
In the moral and essential sphere, "Live for others," live in active 
employment of your social faculties and instincts. In the intellectual 
world, rest in "Order and Progress," — that is, rest in demonstrative 
knowledge and in view of human improvement. In the political and 
social sphere, "Live without concealment," i.e. make your life a pattern 
to your neighbour, and seek to guide him through his reason and never 
to effect a good end by secrecy, fraud, or conspiracy. 

Does Mr. Huxley object to this teaching, does he find 
nothing but Comtism and "eviscerated papistry" therein? 
Now let him note that this of mine was written before the 
earliest of those controversial essays of his ; it was signed by 
me as President of the Positivist Committee of London, and 
it has been printed and sold at New r ton Hall by our body, and 
has been scattered broadcast up and down the country. 

Again, I was asked in 1889 to address the Positivists of Man- 
chester. I said : — 

Our movement is very far from taking Comte's abstruse works in 
some fifteen volumes and treating them as a new revelation with a 
verbal inspiration and biblical authority. Nothing could be more con- 
trary to the Positive spirit than to accept anything on the authority of 
any man, apart from scientific verification. As we cannot pretend to 
have scientific verification for all that may be read in these fifteen 
volumes (a large part of which I, myself, regard as mere illustrations 
of a theory), we are very careful to limit ourselves at present to that 
which we feel we can adopt on conviction; and that amounts, in my 
case, to a set of general leading ideas. 

I said it was an impudent quackery to pretend that Posi- 
tivism was a discovery of the nineteenth century; that, on 
the contrary, it was and had Long been the practical faith of 
millions, and that it sought merely to systematise the inevit- 
able tendency of human evolution. I went on to say : — 

We do not believe in Auguste Comte: we believe in the assurances 
u 



290 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of philosophy and science. We do not worship Positivism. We wor- 
ship, or to use plain English, we submit ourselves reverently to Hu- 
manity. When science has established the real position of Humanity 
on earth, and has indicated the tendency of its progress and the condi- 
tions of its advance, we will cheerfully adopt them. In the meantime 
our Positivism teaches us (in the intellectual sphere) to accept no verity 
for which demonstration is not offered, and (in the moral sphere) to 
profess no worship for any power which we cannot with our brains 
understand, and which we cannot with our hearts honour, sympathise 
with, and in a human sense love and feel for. 

I have now been for very many years President of the Posi- 
tivist Committee of London ; and such is the language I have 
uniformly held to our body at Newton Hall, and especially 
in a series of annual addresses on the first of each year. For 
instance, I said (ist January 1887) : — 

How vain are the criticisms and prophecies with which Comte's 
teaching was met years ago! Cut and dried systems, arid formulas, 
fantastic rites ! — they used to say. Where is there anything fantastic, 
obscurantist, cut and dried here? There is nothing like a sect here. 
We repudiate the very name of Comtists ; assuredly we do not swallow 
down Comte's voluminous writings in the bulk. Four times in these 
last years, on the anniversary of his death thirty years ago, four of us, 
one after the other, have tried to sum up the meaning of his teaching, 
the value of his life. Four times the speaker has said that Comte's 
life is in no sense perfect, not at all to us an object of worship and imi- 
tation, that" it is the soul and essence of his teaching which binds us to- 
gether, and not a servile acceptance of his words, or a lifeless caricature 
of his Utopia. Comte was a poet and an idealist, as well as a philoso- 
pher, and we are not going to turn his poetry into formulas, and his 
ideals into a Pharisaical Targum. 

In 1888 I tried to explain what I meant by a religion of 
Humanity. I said that it would be wholly unlike orthodox 
Catholicism or orthodox Puritanism, but in some ways more 
like the religion of the ancients, i.e. more what we call morality, 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 29 1 

more social than personal, more civic than domestic, more prac- 
tical than mystical. It would savour more of the tone of 
mind taught by Socrates, Confucius, and Marcus Aurelius, 
than that taught by Augustine and Aquinas, Luther and Cal- 
vin. In 1890 I protested against any one attempting to place 
Positivism "on a purely Comtist basis," and against any slid- 
ing into a Pharisaical attention to the "mint and anise of the 
formal Comtist ritual." Again, in 1891, I pointed out that 
"the service of Man does not mean the adoration of Man, nor 
the substitution of a human God for a celestial God, any more 
than the essence of religion implies the worship of a Supreme 
and Perfect Being at all." "It is mere ignorance or per- 
versity," I said, "which imagines that our sole object here is 
to set up the worship of a human God." I explained what is 
meant by the word worship. Of course, Comte's word is 
culte, which implies "regard for," as culte des morts, culte de 
la mere, de lafemme, etc., etc. I said, "What by a mislead- 
ing Gallicism is sometimes spoken of as the l Worship of Hu- 
manity,' means simply to us, not the mystical adoration of an 
abstract idea, but the constant cultivation of an intelligent rev- 
erence for all that has been good and great on earth. 1 y This is 
almost exactly what Mr. Huxley says (p. 366) is his own idea 
of religion, " reverence and love for the ethical ideal." And it 
is this which compels me to claim Mr. Huxley as a (rudi- 
mentary) worshipper of Humanity. He does not like the 
phrase, but he and I mean the same thing. 
In my discourse of 1891 I went on to say: — 

We have here no head, no director, no ritual, no test of orthodoxy, 
no rigid scheme of belief or of worship. We ask do formal submission 

to any hook, or to any single teacher whatever. . . . Where, in the 

ten years that this hall has been at work, has any sign of such things 

[as priestcraft, Or revised Popery] been Seen? Has any one from this 

platform ever held out to you the writings of Comte as a new Bible? 



292 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Has any one of us aspired to the spiritual tyranny of a priest? Has 
any one of us ever presented our faith to you in the light of Comtism — 
I mean the deification of any man, or the rigid acceptance of any set 
of doctrines and practices? Has any one who frequents this hall ever 
been expected to avow his conformity to any articles of any creed? 
Has any man, or any woman, ever been pressed to submit to any order, 
to conform to anything that they did not heartily believe, to keep silence 
when they wished to speak, or to do what they did not approve ? 

Now, that is the language I have held to our body in New- 
ton Hall. Where is the " Papistry," where the " pontiff, " 
where the "allocutions," where is the "ecclesiasticism," the 
Mormonism, the "Anthropolatry," with which Mr. Huxley 
charges me? Do monks, Catholics, or ecclesiastics of any 
Church use this language? Could any theological Church 
venture on it? Where is "Pope and pagan rolled into one" 
in these addresses ? And let me point out that what I have 
quoted are all formal addresses to various Positivist groups, 
given by me as President of the Committee, published and 
distributed broadcast at Newton Hall as expositions of our 
views. They are perfectly consistent with all that I have 
ever uttered for years past, and I challenge Mr. Huxley to 
point out discourses of mine to the contrary. These pub- 
lished pieces of mine are all long anterior to his present book, 
and many of them were anterior to his reprinted attack on me, 
first made in February 1889. And I will add that my dis- 
courses are collected in volumes in several public libraries, 
and certainly in two frequented by Mr. Huxley. 

And what is Mr. Huxley's defence for so strangely misrep- 
resenting me? I cannot say; but I hope he will not at- 
tempt to quote Comte, or some obscure "crank" who may 
call himself a "Comtist." Comte's writings, for the present, 
have nothing to do with it ; for, as I show, they are no gospel 
for me or my friends. I have publicly protested against any 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 293 

"mint and anise of a Comtist ritual" ; I have never held any 
other language. How does he know I am a "Comtist," or 
have anything to do with any "Church of Comte"? I hope 
he will not say that I am angry, as he usually does if one of 
his opponents objects to being called a bad name. Would 
he be angry if I wrote a book about him as an orthodox 
"Haeckelist," and suggested that he kept in his back-yard a 
stuffed gorilla, which he was wont to reverence as his primor- 
dial ancestor? The question for the moment is not what 
Comte has said, but what I have said. Mr. Huxley charges 
me with these things, and the body to which I belong. Why 
am I a "pontiff" more than he is? I express my views; 
so does he. Why are my essays in The Fortnightly Review 
"allocutions," whilst his are Essays on Some Controverted 
Questions ? Why am I a prophet for saying that Agnosticism 
as a religious scheme will fail, whilst he can lay down twelve 
canons for all future speculations? 

Need he trouble himself about the number of my "dis- 
ciples"? Have I "disciples," am I a "disciple," more than 
he? How many score of Huxleyites are there in the three 
kingdoms ? How many disciples has Mr. Herbert Spencer ? 
I trust that we all of us exercise some influence in spheres 
wider than we see or know. But the number of persons to- 
day inclined to group themselves into schools or followings 
of any kind is small. And as to Positivists, we care for in- 
fluence, not for disciples. The ceaseless grinning of the comic 
and clerical pre—, and the bow-wow of great controversialists 
does rather terrify quiet people from the doors of Newton 
Hall. But, putting aside the mere hacks who cadge about 
the Royal Society and the science press, I daresay we can 
show as many "di» iples," if that is needed, as Mr. Huxley. 
When will he preside at the next grand consistory of the Ag- 
nostic Church? 



294 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

I do not imply that Mr. Huxley had any wish to present 
me to the public in a light so utterly untrue ; but I do feel that 
he has been somewhat careless, and has not kept in view all 
the twelve canons of Agnostic veracity. What did he know, 
what did he try to find out about my sayings and doings at 
Newton Hall ? Little, I fear, but what he picked out of casual 
and usually malicious paragraphs in the press. Newton Hall 
is open to all men ; piles of literature lie on its tables at cost 
price. The annual reports of the body and our own addresses 
are collected in volumes, and are in many public libraries. 
Did Mr. Huxley read these before he came forward to hold 
me up as a sort of Mormon prophet and Comtist hierophant ? 
When, in 1889, he first attacked me, I was so much pleased 
by his gallant onslaught on superstition, and so thankful to 
note his latent profession of a human and ethical religion, 
that I let any public reply stand over. I spoke to him pri- 
vately, told him that he had mistaken my attitude, and he 
seemed glad to recognise that we were not so far apart after 
all. And now I find him, in 1892, reprinting all these pre- 
posterous caricatures about myself, though I showed him how 
much he was mistaken in his facts, and he has had abundant 
opportunity to learn that he had been. Oh ! Agnosticism, 
with thy ethical ideal of veracity, what things are done in thy 
name ! 

I know Mr. Huxley does not mean to be unkind — 
indeed, for thirty years past we have been on most friendly 
terms, and he prefaces his annihilation of me with some very 
handsome words. And I am sure that he could not willingly 
be unfair. But with all his noble qualities he has his antipa- 
thies, and there are one or two names which seem to send him 
dancing mad. Worse than Mr. Gladstone — worse than 
General Booth — is Auguste Comte. He has a standing 
quarrel with this philosopher ; and the idea of any one having 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 295 

part or parcel in his opinions affects Mr. Huxley so acutely 
that he can barely control himself within the twelve canons of 
scientific Agnosticism. Now I am not going to argue with him 
about Comte. I should like to do so, and if he will name 
place and time, I will gladly attempt to convert him ; but for 
the moment there is neither space nor opportunity. Comte 
was a philosopher, not a scientific specialist, and his know- 
ledge, of course, was that of fifty years ago. But his philo- 
sophic power was recognised by his greatest contemporaries, 
and has been fully admitted by hostile critics in England, 
such as Mill, Herbert Spencer, G. H. Lewes, John Morley, 
and others of philosophic competence, far greater than Mr. 
Huxley's. But into whatever blunders Comte may have 
fallen, and he could not have fallen into bigger blunders 
than did Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, or Leibnitz, in their own 
day, and however extravagant to Agnostics may seem his 
Utopia of 1852 — the point now in issue is, How do I and those 
I am associated with present Positivism to-day; and is it a 
more scientific, more rational, more philosophic scheme than 
Agnosticism pure and simple? 

Mr. Huxley seems to think the matter is concluded by citing 
French books forty years old, by which I say I am not bound ; 
and when he has found some statements in Comte which do 
not square with the assumed discoveries of modern physicists, 
he proclaims to the world that Positivists are sworn enemies 
of 1 ience, and practise a mixture of mummery and Papistry. 
I invite the most rigorous application of Agnostic canons to 
the following facts. M. Pierre Laffitte, a well-known teacher 
of science in Paris, was the pupil and is the successor of Au- 

guste Comte, recognised as such by the only organised body 

of PositivistS in France. For thirty years he has taught the 

Si iences to large audiences in Paris. Recently the Govern- 
ment, on the advice of M. Renan, founded a new chair in 



296 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

the College de France for the History of the Sciences. M. 
Laffitte was appointed the Professor. There was much 
opposition to the foundation of the chair, and to filling it with 
an avowed Agnostic ; but not one word was uttered to dispute 
the eminent scientific attainments of M. Laffitte. The found- 
ing of such a chair was challenged in the Senate, wherein sit 
many men of high academic position, more or less alien to any 
religious teaching of Positivism. The Minister in the Senate 
read a long letter from M. Renan, and declared that, by the 
advice of eminent scientists, he had appointed M. Laffitte as 
being the most competent man he could find. And there 
was a chorus of approval of his choice, M. Laffitte being recog- 
nised as the man naturally fitted for such a post, and, indeed, 
as the only person specially qualified or suggested. M. 
Laffitte for years continued his teaching in science along 
with his colleagues — such as Dr. Robinet, Dr. Delbet, Dr. 
Dubuisson, Dr. Hillemand, Dr. Clement, all well-known 
physiologists and men of science in Paris, and with scores of 
other men of high academic reputation. Does this look like 
being the enemies of science ? Or are the Government, Sen- 
ate, and academies of France bent on promoting "bad 
science and eviscerated Papistry"? 

I turn to our English body. The person who preceded 
me as Chairman of the Positivist Committee is Dr. Bridges, 
formerly a physician of the highest promise, and subsequently 
an important public servant. The speaker chosen in 1892 
by the College of Physicians to deliver the Harveian oration 
was Dr. Bridges. He has been for years one of our principal 
teachers at Newton Hall, along with others, physiologists, 
chemists, mathematicians, whose profession it is to teach one 
or other of the sciences in different institutions in this coun- 
try. We have lately published a biographical work on a purely 
positivist basis, a book of which I have myself taken a share 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 297 

and am general editor. I am not about to say anything in its 
behalf; but I call attention to this, that of the contributors 
to that volume, at least a quarter were men of special scientific 
training, men teaching or practising science as their profession. 
The collection of biographies includes the lives of five hun- 
dred and fifty-eight persons ; and of these about one hundred 
are men of special science. As I had no hand in these, I may 
be permitted to say that very many of these studies have been 
thought to be amongst the best contributions to science of our 
time. The Merry Andrews of the anonymous press made 
mouths at us as usual ; but I am not aware that any one has 
discovered either bad science or eviscerated Papistry in our 
aggregate labours. The notion that Positivists in England 
or in France are " enemies of science," or anything but teach- 
ers of science, is a wild figment. 

I daresay that Mr. Huxley, who so often teaches bishops 
theology, would like to teach me Positivism. He will be 
ready to tell me that if I do not profess ecclesiastical ob- 
scurantism and practise grotesque rites, I ought to do so, and 
am no orthodox Positivist if I do not. That is my affair. If, 
as he seems to think, there is a Positivist Vatican, syllabus, 
inquisition, and index, I will take the risk ; it is not for him to 
denounce me. My profound conviction of the central ideas 
of the religion of humanity, and my reverential gratitude to 
the philosopher who first gave it a systematic basis, are beyond 
suspicion and deeper than words can express. But when I 
show the world how thin and transitional a thing is Agnosticism 
as a religious philosophy, I am not answered by repeating 
stale jeers about Comte's ritualism or Comte's mistake-. 
I have listened patiently to these now for years; for I am a 

man of peace, a poor hand at controversy, and a great admirer 
of my critic. But the worm will turn at last. And now that 

Mr. Huxley republishes all his absurd charges against me by 



298 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

name, it is due to myself and my colleagues to show what 
we do hold and what we practise. Our doings and sayings 
at Newton Hall are open to all men, and may be read in many 
pamphlets and books. I hear there are in South America 
some people who take all they find in Comte literally, and 
they may have a few confederates elsewhere. But I know 
nothing of them, and they have nothing to do with me or with 
us. All that I am concerned with is this, that at Newton Hall 
there will not be found anything but sound science, a free 
appeal to reason, and rational and ethical religion. 

But let me part from Mr. Huxley with friendly feelings. 
We are on the same side, and I know that he wishes me well. 
We are all proud of him, and that pride has received very 
notable expression from the Government and Sovereign of 
this country. For my part, I have been for thirty years, ever 
since I used to attend with the keenest delight his lectures 
on physiology, one of his warmest admirers. No one living 
has a finer command than he has of nervous English, a more 
inborn instinct to make alive everything he touches, or a more 
honest contempt for humbug. Of old we were colleagues in 
the Metaphysical Society, where to hear Mr. Huxley bait a 
theologian, or prick a metaphysical bubble, was more exciting 
than a bull- fight. With the reasoning of nine-tenths of this 
book I am, as I say, in complete accord ; and there are many 
things in it which want of space alone prevents me from sin- 
gling out for praise. It is most satisfactory to find a champion 
of Agnosticism repudiating the nonsense about "the Unknow- 
able" whether with a big or little U (p. 451). His distinction 
between the "unknown" and the "unknowable" is thor- 
oughly positive in every sense of that term. And all that he 
says of the contrast between Agnosticism and Clericalism is 
most judicious and conclusive. It is pleasant, too, to find him 
adopting the English word Renascence, which for years I have 



MR. HUXLEY'S CONTROVERSIES 



299 



been striving to acclimatise in place of the misleading Galli- 
cism Renaissance. But most important of all is the positive 
declaration of faith that "the service of humanity" is the 
natural and permanent type of true religion. I can forgive 
him all the hard words he showers upon me, if I have been the 
humble instrument of leading this great Agnostic to avow his 
own gnostic faith at last. 

It is most cheering to find that Mr. Huxley looks for a solu- 
tion of the religious problem in this human, social, and 
terrestrial direction, and not in any Absolute philosophy of 
the Universe, or in any Agnostic creed whatever. He is quite 
right in rejecting Agnosticism as a creed, or the basis of a 
creed. It is interesting to find him disclaiming any scheme 
for a "Philosophy of Evolution." Mr. Herbert Spencer 
has attempted it with extraordinary powers and attainments? 
and has signally failed. And where Mr. Spencer has failed 
Mr. Huxley is not likely to succeed. Science, or rather 
physiology and its cognate subjects, is Mr. Huxley's true field, 
and not philosophy, much less the philosophy of religion. He 
is too prone to promote religion by ridiculing theology. He 
is too ready to think that those who differ from him, whether 
theologians or Positivists, are enemies of science. But the 
latter, at any rate, can congratulate him on his new volume 
of essays as a brilliant contribution to the logic of scientific 
inquiry, and as an indication that he is really something more 
than an Agnostic. 



XVIII 
MR. HUXLEY'S IRONICON 

I AM quite content to leave my debate with Mr. Huxley 
about Agnosticism just as it stands. His explanations have 
made his position, to me at least, much clearer than before ; 
and I am pleased to have drawn from him these interesting 
elucidations. Agreeing with him as I do in the main on 
the ultimate background of philosophical thought, I have 
nothing to add on that topic. Sat prata biberunt. He and I 
find common ground on our tabula rasa as to the whole field 
beyond human knowledge. Only, I find in the field within 
it certain great truths which Mr. Huxley does not see, or sees 
dimly. Be it so : let him which is agnostic be agnostic still. 
I too am agnostic as to all that is outside the field of science. 
As to that which is within it I find a power nobler and more 
dominant than Nature — and that is Humanity. 

But I have something to say about the wonderful discover- 
ies concerning myself and my opinions which Mr. Huxley 
announces to the public. I will try to treat them as seriously 
as I can ; but, as a sober person myself, I find it hard to rise 
to the boisterous humour of his Ironicon, which doubtless 
only by a slip of the pen he spells Irenicon. 

He has now found out that I have abjured the fundamental 
dogmas of Positivism, that I contemptuously set aside Au- 
guste Comte, and have forsworn any worship or religion of 
Humanity. Perhaps he will tell the world next that Mr. 
Gladstone has abandoned Home Rule, that Lord Salisbury is 

300 



MR. HUXLEY'S IRONICON 30 1 

about to abolish the House of Lords, and that Sir Wilfrid 
Lawson has joined the Licensed Victuallers. 

The evidence for this piece of news is "the good old rule, 
the simple plan" of quoting half a sentence, suppressing the 
other half, ignoring the context, and twisting the selected words 
into a new meaning. I know there is high recent authority 
for the practice which a great personage thinks it useful to 
adopt ; and it is one of the most venerable weapons of theo- 
logical war. I remember at Oxford an eminent divine who 
was fond (it was said) of proving, to the confusion of all Pa- 
pists, that St. Peter was not above the other apostles, for 
Christ said, "Lo! I am with you all "-[ways, sotto voce]. 

Now by such a use of the argumentum a suppressione Mr. 
Huxley has proved to his own satisfaction that I contemptu- 
ously abjure Auguste Comte. He tells the world that I have 
written — " We do not believe in Auguste Comte." My an- 
swer is that I did not so write. I wrote a sentence out of 
which those words are picked; a sentence which bears a 
totally different meaning. Three years ago I was addressing 
the Positivist body in Manchester, and by way of warning 
them against any tendency to look for a verbal inspiration 
in Comte's writings, but to remember that a religion of dem- 
onstration must rest on scientific proof and not on authority, 
I said what I have often said before and since. 

Positivism is not independent of the growth of sound science. It 
depends upon it. Auguste Comte is not above philosophy and science- 
And when philosophy and science have superseded his theories with 
the sure evidence of other doctrines we will be the first to adopt them. 
We do not believe in Auguste Comte: we believe in the assurances of 
philosophy and science. We do not worship Positivism. We worship 
or (to use plain English) we submit ourselves reverently to Humanity. 

The meaning of this is perfectly plain. Remember, I said, 



302 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

that the ultimate basis of Positivism is the growth of sound 
science. Do not put the words of any book, no, not Comte's, 
above philosophy and science. Attach no superstitious rev- 
erence to what you may take to be Positivism. The object 
of our worship — and by worship we mean reverent sub- 
mission — is Humanity, as revealed by Science. 

From this plain and, I think, very reasonable passage of 
mine Mr. Huxley detaches the words, "We do not believe in 
Auguste Comte"; putting a full stop where there was none, 
and suppressing the context, in order to prove that I have 
"contemputously," "contumeliously," set aside Comte. 
And he finds in it evidence that I have abjured the funda- 
mental dogmas of Positivism, and forswear the worship and 
the religion of Humanity. So pleased is he with the device 
that in four pages he cites these detached words five times, 
and he makes them the pivot of his remarks. I shall use no 
epithets to describe what to my mind savours of a child's game. 
It would be easy to prove anything by the same process. In 
p. 570 Mr. Huxley tells us that he is a very strong believer in 
hell, and intimates that he has himself "descended into hell." 
In his " Prologue," p. 52, he speaks of the Bible as the Magna 
Charta. It is quite true that the context shows that, in using 
these words, he means something very different ; but what if 
some lively writer were to fill the pages of a Review with: 
"Mr. Huxley a Calvinist"; "the great Agnostic has been in 
hell and sees at last it is all true" ; "Mr. Huxley, the Atheist, 
is now converted to Holy Writ" — and so forth? It is very 
easy, and infinitely silly, to say nothing more. Mr. Huxley 
protests that he is no teacher or moralist. I think in his 
meditative retirement he should beware of rushing to the 
other extreme. 

Suppose a facetious person, knowing Mr. Huxley's admira- 
tion for the philosophers Descartes and Hume, were to twit 



MR. HUXLEY'S IRONICON 303 

him with being a believer in "vortices," or in Hume's estimate 
of Charles I., Mr. Huxley might reply, "I am no Cartesian in 
the sense of believing in Descartes against the verdict of 
science ; nor do I put Hume above the conclusions of sound 
historical knowledge." Whereupon the facetious person 
rejoins, "Mr. Huxley abjures Descartes, snaps his fingers at 
Hume, says he does not believe in either, has patented a new 
philosophy all his own ! Poor old Descartes, good old David, 
it must make you turn in your graves to be so befooled," etc., 
etc. It is quite easy but it is a form of jesting for which I 
have no turn. 

Mr. Huxley informs the public, mainly on the strength 
of the garbled sentence — 1. That I reject the fundamental 
doctrines of Positivism; 2. That I contemptuously disbelieve 
in Comte; 3. That I abjure systematic worship; 4. That I 
seek to get rid of a religion of Humanity. There is not a 
word of truth in any one of these propositions. But, even if 
they were true, what business is it of Mr. Huxley, and how 
does it prove Agnosticism to be the only sensible creed? It 
is worth while noticing how the debate has come round to this 
point. Some years ago I wrote an article to show that, how- 
ever true as a philosophic thesis, Agnosticism was not an 
adequate or permanent solution of the religious problem. 
Mr. Huxley, whom I had not criticised, replied, not indeed to 
my argument, but by comparing me to the Pope, Joe Smith, 
and other personages. That did not advance the case of Ag- 
nosticism; but I said no more. Three years afterwards he 
republishes the comparison of myself to the Pope and Joe 
Smith, in spite of my friendly remonstrances. I then took 
occasion to -how, from a series of published addresses of 

mine, that nothing could be less like the Pope or Joe Smith 
than what I had been saying for years. And now he replies 
that I am a turncoat, unorthodox, an ungrateful, rebellious, 



304 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

and doubting disciple, and so forth. How does all this ad- 
vance the case of Agnosticism as the final creed of science ? 
It does not seem a very consistent thing to repudiate a system 
of belief for oneself, and yet to set up as judge of orthodoxy 
within it for others. Mr. Huxley would perhaps like Catho- 
lics and Protestants to come to him if they want to understand 
their own creeds, and not to listen to what they say at Rome 
or at Lambeth. 

The article in which Mr. Huxley finds my contemptuous 
rejection of the fundamental dogmas of Positivism and of 
Auguste Comte contained this sentence: — "My profound 
conviction of the central ideas of the religion of humanity, and 
my reverential gratitude to the philosopher who first gave it a 
systematic basis, are beyond suspicion and deeper than words 
can express." With these words before him, Mr. Huxley 
thinks it worth his while to twist a phrase out of its context 
a few pages earlier, and gravely to tell the world of my " dis- 
belief in the prophet," with sundry comicalities about Moses 
and Joshua, Mecca and Mahomet. There was a much 
simpler process ready to his hand. He should have taken 
the passage cited above, and quoted it after altering the word 
"conviction" into "disbelief," and "reverential gratitude" 
into "scorn." In religious controversy you should never 
stick at trifles. 

The address in which Mr. Huxley discovers that I have 
abjured the religion of Humanity closes with the following 
passages : — 

People who hear of a religion of Humanity for the first time are apt 
to compare it with the religion, so-called, of Christ, and of an omnipo- 
tent and omniscient Creator ; and they very naturally find it difficult 
to accept the divinity of the human race, its infinite wisdom, goodness, 
and power, and all the other relative attributes of a Creator. No such 
comparison is possible or reasonable. Those who are fully convinced 



MR. HUXLEY'S IRONICON 305 

of the reality and certainty of the Creator, and of the authority of the 
ways in which his will has been revealed to man, will not be disturbed 
in their belief by any word of ours. But that large and growing order 
of thinking men and women, who have no such conviction, may fairly 
be asked to reflect if religion has not been pitched in far too extravagant 
and mystical a key, if to ask for omnipotence, omniscience, all-gootlness, 
and all-majesty be not an extravagant demand; and if a manly, sober, 
rational, and practical religion may not be found in ideals less exalted, 
perhaps, but then far more distinct and close to us, in the trained sense 
of duty that we owe to the vast organic being of humanity, past, present, 
and to come, to render to it some infinitesimal part of the service which 
it has rendered to us, to look up to it with respect as our true mother 
on the earth, and to look forward to its indefinite progress in the future 
to a nobler state as the best equivalent of dreams of personal immor- 
tality. Duty to family has long been acknowledged as the most pre- 
cious inheritance of civilised mankind; duty to country has long been 
felt to be the foundation of men's life as social beings. There is one 
step more in the series which has long been taken unconsciously, but 
which it now awaits us to take consciously — the sense of duty to Hu- 
manity — a duty which, if less vivid in its power over us than duty to 
family, if less visibly present to us than duty to country, is infinitely 
grander, more permanent, more social than the idea of family or coun- 
try, and is incapable of being turned, as both of these are, into a narrow 
selfishness; and which, when duly cultivated by training from child- 
hood, and duly set forth with all the glow of imagination and enthusiasm, 
is amply sufficient to make men steadfast and true in life, calm and re- 
signed in death, just, honest, sober, and humane towards all men and 
at all times. 

I have now been engaged (not indeed by my own spon- 
taneous act, but by the pressing call of others) for some 
twenty years in endeavouring to explain these ideas, and 
for many years I have been constantly addressing our body at 
Newton Hall. In all that time not one word has ever fallen 
from me other than what I truly described, in my article of 
last October, as "profound conviction of the central ideas of 
the religion of Humanity, and reverential gratitude" towards 



306 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Auguste Comte. I have before me, in a collected volume, 
scores of such utterances extending over the last fourteen 
years. I shall not weary the reader with setting them forth ; 
nor can I notice attempts to prove the contrary by the school- 
boy's diversion of perverting a sentence by erasing words. 

I am no stickler for consistency, and have but a moderate 
opinion of its virtue, in things practical and temporal. In 
philosophy and religion, anything but gradual evolution is 
perhaps a sign of weakness. Looking back over the course 
of our movement at Newton Hall and its very cautious de- 
velopment, I can find no trace of any variation in principle. 
Complete unity of idea has marked it throughout, and has 
certainly pervaded my own public utterances. As a sum- 
mary of my own belief I have used indeed the same words 
from first to last without change. In the lines which we first 
laid down we have steadfastly continued; and, ever since I 
first addressed the public on these questions, I have, for my 
own part, uniformly held the same language and maintained 
the same position. The discovery, therefore, of any change 
of front, either in our movement or in my own teaching, is 
only the discovery of another mare's nest. 

"I took it for granted," says Mr. Huxley, to me, "that you 
practised everything to be read in Comte on his absolute au- 
thority — priesthood on the Papistical model, spiritual despo- 
tism and all." Now a rigid Agnostic should not take matters 
of fact for granted without verification. Why take this for 
granted? I reply by quoting a series of addresses which 
show that, whilst looking to the teaching of Comte with 
reverence and gratitude, we have never attributed to him ver- 
bal inspiration, and have no priesthood or spiritual despotism 
at all. Well, then, says he, " You ought to have, you are un- 
grateful rebels, apostates, and shams ; and if you do not know 
what the essence of Positivism is, I will take leave to show you." 



MR. HUXLEY'S IROXICON 307 

Mr. Huxley has written a great deal about Descartes, for 
whom he professes a boundless respect. At the root of Des- 
cartes' system stands his proof of the existence of God. 
Suppose I "took it for granted" that Mr. Huxley adopted 
all this; he denies it; thereupon I reply, "Here is a rebel, 
sham believer in Descartes ! What ingratitude, what fraud ! 
The existence of God is the beginning and end of his doctrine, 
and the Xeo-Cartesians reject it ! I don't myself believe in 
all this metaphysics, but you are bound to do so." Such is the 
language he holds to me. 

The ground which, from the first, I took up and have un- 
ceasingly maintained is quite consistent and perfectly plain. 
In the address of 1889, already quoted, I put it thus : — 

The idea of Positivism, of a co-ordination of Philosophy and Science, 
of a religion based on Demonstration, of Humanity as a living force 
and as an object of reverence, is as completely English and American 
as it is French, and belongs to the last four or five generations of en- 
lightened men, and certainly to our own. We as a body have now 
been organised these many years, and have met week by week and 
year by year to make clear the faith that is in us. But we have as yet 
made no attempt whatever to put into practice all the suggestions and 
prescriptions that can be picked out of the writings of Auguste Comte. 

That has been my position from the first. If it shocks 
Mr. Huxley, I can only smile at his setting up for a grand 
inquisitor. He may call me all the names he can discover 
in the long history of heresy and schism — Supralapsarian or 
Homoeousian — he may denounce me, if it give him satisfac- 
tion, for confusing the persons or dividing the substance; 
but if he says that I have ever uttered one word of disresped 
for Comte or for the genuine worship of Humanity, he will 
be saving that which manifestly is not. 1 

1 The other day, at a public place, an aggre ssi ve pei a mild 

gentleman of carrying off his umbrella. The mild gentleman politely held 

up his, and showed his own name and addn - | on the handle. 



308 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

And then Mr. Huxley sets up to teach me what I mean, 
or what I ought to mean, by the worship of Humanity. The 
simplest course would be to "take it for granted" that I 
mean what I say. I have stated it fully and precisely, but 
that does not satisfy him. My words were : — "I mean no 
more than reverence and love for all that is good and great 
in the social organism." On the next page I said — By 
"religion" I mean the service of humanity; by "humanity," 
the permanent and collective power of the human organism ; 
by "worship," the sense of gratitude, love, and reverence 
which men feel for their country, their family, their bene- 
factors — somewhat higher in degree, but not differing in 
kind. I mean that and nothing more. I have always meant 
that. I intend to mean that. And, if any one tells me that 
I do not mean that, I can only politely request him to mind 
his own business. But Mr. Huxley is not content with that : 
he wants to teach me what I do mean, and is quite scan- 
dalised at my obstinate heresy. Can anything be more 
comic than Mr. Huxley raising an outcry that these wicked, 
ungrateful Positivists will not believe the plain words of 
Comte — or rather, what he, Mr. Huxley, the Agnostic, takes 
for granted to be the plain words of Comte ? 

All that he says about culte is another mare's nest. His 
words are — "When the founder of Positivism uses the 
word ' culte,' he, indubitably, uses it in the strict theological 
sense." To this I reply, in the classical language of Mr. 
Burchell, in the Vicar of Wakefield, "Fudge." Mr. Huxley 
goes on — "he sets 'Humanity' as the 'new Supreme Being' 
in the place of the Divinity of the theologians." Again, 
with Mr. Burchell, I say — "Fudge." Arrant, laughable 

But the aggressive one did not apologise. " I took it for granted," said he, 
" that you had got mine, because I assumed you were not likely to have got 
so good a one of your own ! " 






MR. HUXLEY'S IRONICON 309 

nonsense, as any one who has read Comte with due care, 
well knows. Culte is, of course, good French for worship 
in the strict theological sense, the adoration of a superhuman 
transcendent Divinity. It also means, as Littre states in his 
dictionary, " veneration profonde," i.e. sincere reverence, 
and Littre quotes the phrase, "J'eus pour Scipion ce culte 
qu'il est doux d'accorder au genie." * Now this is the sense 
in which culte is habitually used by Comte. When he recom- 
mends "le culte des morts," "le culte de la femme," "le 
culte d 'amour," does he mean the adoration (in the strict 
theological sense) of the dead as divinities, or of women, or 
does he mean the "adoration" of love? Nonsense, fudge! 
he means the cherishing a feeling of "sincere reverence" for 
the worthy dead, for good women, cherishing the spirit of 
love (rather than of hate and contempt). 

It so happens that Comte 's own daily prayers are pub- 
lished, as he recited them during eleven years down to his 
death. They fill twenty octavo pages, and, from first to 
last, there is not a single phrase of adoration of Humanity, 
"in the strict theological sense." They consist entirely of 
moral sentiments, passages from Dante, Petrarch, and other 
poets, mental reflections on the goodness of a dead woman 
who was his Beatrice or Laura, and passages from their 
correspondence during life. The first line is, "Ce culte 
d 'amour et de reconnaissance ne peut jamais cesser de me 
soulager et surtout de m'ameliorer." Does this mean — this 
adoration of love, etc., etc.? Of course not. The English 
of it is — "This cherishing of love and gratitude (for a dead 
friend) can never fail to comfort, and above all to elevate 

1 As I write, I read in a recent political essay by a Belgian author, Dr. 
Sarolea, the Following description of Condorcet, "Croyant quand menu- 
malgre' la Terreur, an culte ie VhumaniM" Certainly Condorcet never 

dreamed in 1704 of " worshipping humanity." All that it means is, that lie 
had a profound faith in human nature. 



310 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

me." Further on Comte speaks of "le culte intime d'une 
tendre mere et d'une digne fille ou sceur." Can this mean 
the divinising and adoring, "in the strict theological sense," 
of mother, daughter, or sister? Of course not. It means, 
cherishing the feeling of love for mother, daughter, sister. 

Culte is a word which, as used by Comte, cannot well be 
rendered by any single English word or phrase. It implies 
all that can stimulate, cultivate, and enlarge our feeling of 
respect, gratitude, and love for some worthy object. Every 
act, whether of study, of expression, of art, or of meditation, 
which cultivates these feelings is included. "Worship" is a 
very inadequate word, for it has come, in modern days, to 
be restricted to the expressions of adoration for superhuman 
objects. Culte de VHumanite properly includes such differ- 
ent things as the commemoration of great men; a Mozart 
or Handel festival; a visit to Shakespeare's birthplace and 
grave ; a course of lectures on history ; the reading of Dante, 
Milton, or Moliere. When our body in Paris, annually, on 
September 5th, visits the tomb of Comte in P ere-la- Chaise ; 
when, in London, we visit the Abbey, where lie those whom 
Mr. Huxley, in his poetic hours, and in purely Positivist 
phraseology, so happily invokes as "head servants of the 
human kind"; when we sing in chorus the Marseillaise or 
Tennyson's "Ring out, wild bells," we do what Comte 
means by the culte de VHumanite. To restrict the term to 
the invocation of an ideal being is contrary to the language 
as to the practice of Comte ; and it is contrary to ours. Mr. 
Huxley quotes Candide's "Cultivons notre jardin." Does 
that mean, adore our garden? When next he undertakes to 
teach me French he should look into his Littre. 

Comte chose to make use of a number of terms as old 
and as widespread as the human kind, which in modern 
Europe have drifted into a narrow, technical use. It was a 



MR. HUXLEY'S IRONICON 311 

very perilous experiment, which perhaps has weighted his 
teaching more than anything else. And the risk is doubled 
when the French is crudely done into English terms of the 
same sound with different connotations. " Religion" has 
got to mean " adoring the Divinity." " Supreme Being" 
now means God. "Worship" comes to mean invoking God. 
" Service" has come to mean recital of prayers or litany. 
But these ancient terms do not properly mean this. There 
is a very old and real religion of Confucius ; in the marriage 
service the husband "worships" the wife; and the Republic 
was the supreme being of Danton. When the French terms 
are crudely put into schoolboy English, the confusion is still 
greater. A young Frenchman "adores" his mother, and 
even black coffee. He does not address his tutor as "dear 
sir," but as "venerable maitre"; every one who speaks for 
three minutes on his legs is an "orator"; and a pretty 
woman is ange, deesse, divinite, and so forth. They who 
have had to translate French know how seldom the French 
word can be rendered by its English synonym. Here is a 
pitfall for the tiro and a godsend to the funny man. Comte 
boldly used these ancient terms in their sterling, general 
sense to mean things utterly different from the acquired 
theological sense. The tiro and the funny man persist in 
using them in the narrow theological sense. 

It is a troublesome task to bring back indispensable terms 
to their true, rational, and scientific meaning and to wrest 
them from the grasp of priests; but it has to be done. We 
who are no longer the slaves of theological associations, now 
Use "religion" for our devotion to our sense of human duty, 
"worship" for the cultivation of intelligent reverence, "ser- 
vice" for acts of usefulness and goodness towards our fellow- 
men, and "Supreme Being" for the collective power of the 
human organism. Mr. Huxley, who seems still in the bond- 



312 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

age of theological associations, is scandalised at this profane 
use of sacred language, and invokes heaven and earth to 
witness how shamefully poor Comte is being betrayed. Let 
him use his Littre to better purpose, read Comte with the 
honest end of trying to understand him, and not to find in 
him a peg for a few epigrams, and cease to accuse Positivists 
of heresy, schism, and profanity, because they study Comte 
with open minds and understand the French language. 

Take an extreme case. To the ordinary theological mind, 
" Supreme Being" means God Almighty. To every one who 
holds Agnostic opinions about creation and the conclusions 
of sociology as to the social organism, it is an accurate de- 
scription of humanity. It is a term of exact science, and 
not of mystical adoration. What is a "being"? Obviously 
a man, woman, dog, family, city, country, and so forth, 
every collective unit having organic life and continuity. To 
the sociologist the social organism is simply a great organic 
being ; to the Agnostic it is the greatest organic being scien- 
tifically known to us on our planet. The social organism is 
therefore with rigorous accuracy described as the highest 
great organism known to science. I do not myself use a 
term so liable to be misunderstood, but Comte, who had 
the courage of his opinions, at times uses the term Etre- 
Supreme, or Grand Etre, for the social organism. When he 
talks of "serving" it, he means by doing your duty; when 
he talks of "loving" it, he means, love your race as you love 
your country ; and by chants to it, he means what our fore- 
fathers meant when they sang, God save the king ! or when 
John of Gaunt broke out — 

This happy breed of men, this little world, 
This precious stone set in the silver sea. 

That is what Comte meant and what we mean. Those 



MR. HUXLEY'S IRONICON 3 13 

that please may laugh. But the laughers only show that 
they cannot get rid of their early theological associations, 
and still see some mystical nonsense in exact scientific terms. 
Why, then, need we use terms which have acquired by asso- 
ciation special connotations? Simply because we desire to 
divert old associations of reverence towards real and de- 
monstrable objects of gratitude and respect. 

This is now being carried into practice by a body of men 
and women who find in it happiness and strength — a happi- 
ness and a strength which make them supremely indifferent 
to the opinion of idle people wandering about the fair and 
looking out for heads to crack. Those who care to find out 
what it means can easily satisfy themselves, for the doors 
are always open and there are no mysteries. It is waste of 
time for them to cite a few sentences out of books they have 
never studied and do not understand. It would be as hope- 
ful a task to try to make out what the Catholic Church is 
in practice by collecting a few texts from Suarez, or by con- 
cocting epigrams about the Syllabus. I am sorry if we can- 
not look for assistance, or even sympathy, from Mr. Huxley 
— who speaks like a man to whom this world offers nothing 
to hope and little to love. But I am glad to think that the 
pessimism of his declining years will be soothed by that fine 
prophetic sentiment of his — that the service of humanity is 
the "only religion which will prove itself to be unassailably 
acceptable as long as the human race endures." 



XIX 

MR. A. BALFOUR'S FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF 

Mr. Arthur Balfour's book has excited so much atten- 
tion and so directly challenges the Positivist Foundations of 
Belief, that some notice of it should now be taken. It is 
due to the high position which Mr. Balfour holds as a states- 
man and the obvious importance of any pronouncement of 
his on the popular creed. All respect must be given to his 
great ability and eminent position: his own graceful and 
ingenious spirit charms millions of his countrymen ; and the 
eloquence, wit, and pathetic dreaminess of his writing can- 
not fail to be popular. But to speak the plain truth, his 
book offers us nothing new, nothing of philosophical power. 
It is mainly the old cloudy, sceptical, sub-cynical pessimism 
— trotted out again in the interest of the powers that be 
and the established creed. That such vague guessing and 
doubting should be seriously treated as the foundations of 
belief is a curious proof of the palsy which seems to be creep- 
ing over masculine thought and of the current set of opinion, 
under the tide of conservative reaction, towards metaphysical 
and theological conundrums. 

It is not easy for a sincere admirer of Mr. Balfour's very 
interesting genius to treat frankly a book to which he has 

evidently given his whole heart. Amicus Plato sed . He 

has already treated of Positivism with the respect of genuine 
alarm and the ignorance of utter misconception ; and much 
as one would make allowances for a graceful and candid 

3H 



MR. A. BALFOUR'S FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF 315 

critic, whose strength is given to statesmanship and not to 
philosophy, it would be real weakness to follow the adula- 
tion of the press, and to pretend that there is anything new 
or serious in these pretty bubbles of hypothetical doubts and 
imaginary dangers which Mr. Balfour has often blown before, 
and which so many other defenders of the faith have blown 
before and since. 

It is not necessary to follow Mr. Balfour throughout his 
elaborate argument, because the whole of it is vitiated by 
the radical misconception which underlies the entire book, 
and which is carefully expounded in the preliminary chap- 
ter. His book is a convergent series of attacks on what he 
calls "Naturalism"; but it is plain from his opening pages 
that he misunderstands the philosophy of " Naturalism," that 
he misconceives its data, its method, its logic, and its aim. 
What he calls "Naturalism" is a method of reasoning that 
is not adopted by any school of credit in this country at any 
rate, but which he magnifies into a soul-destroying form of 
infidelity such as we so often hear denounced in impassioned 
sermons from the pulpit. The schools of thought which 
Mr. Balfour thinks he is confuting under the common 
description of Naturalism all deny that they ever held any 
such views at all. Agnostics, Empiricists, Evolutionists, 
Positivists, all in turn declare that they have neither kith 
nor kin with Mr. Balfour's "Naturalism." There may 
be types of French or German materialists who hold some- 
thing of the sort. But as to our own Agnostics, Empiri- 
cists, Evolutionists, and Positivists, Mr. Balfour, it is plain, 
has no real knowledge of their bases of belief or of their 
canons of reasoning. In his preliminary chapter he tells 
us that his book has reference to a system which ultimately 
profits by the defeat of Theology, and he thus describes 
this system ; — 



316 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Agnosticism, Positivism, Empiricism, have all been used more or less 
correctly to describe this scheme of thought; though in the following 
pages, for reasons with which it is not necessary to trouble the reader, 
the term which I shall commonly employ is Naturalism. But what- 
ever the name selected, the thing itself is sufficiently easy to describe. 
For its leading doctrines are that we may know "phenomena" and 
the laws by which they are connected, but nothing more. "More" 
there may or may not be; but if it exists we can never apprehend it; 
and whatever the world may be "in its reality" (supposing such an 
expression to be otherwise than meaningless) the World for us, the 
World with which alone we are concerned, or of which alone we can 
have any cognisance, is that World which is revealed to us through 
perception, and which is the subject-matter of the Natural Sciences. 
Here, and here only, are we on firm ground. Here, and here only, can 
we discover anything which deserves to be described as knowledge. 
Here, and here only, may we profitably exercise our reason or gather 
the fruits of Wisdom. Such in rough outline is Naturalism. 



And in a note Mr. Balfour explains that by phenomena he 
means "things and events, the general subject-matter of 
Natural Science" ; and by Metaphysics he means knowledge 
" respecting realities which are not phenomenal, e.g. God and 
the Soul." 

Now the passage just quoted is full of confusion and mis- 
statement. In the first place, Positivism and Agnosticism 
stand widely apart. Recent controversy has emphasised the 
fact that they entirely decline to accept each other's starting- 
point. Positivism is the religion of Humanity resting on the 
philosophy of human nature. Agnosticism, as a specific 
philosophy, is necessarily negative: declining to commit 
itself to any definite religion. Nor is Positivism in any sense 
the equivalent of Empiricism. It has never identified itself 
with any absolute scheme of Evolutionism as a systematic 
and synthetic philosophy of the Universe. It has stoutly 
repudiated all absolute syntheses or attempts to explain the 



MR. A. BALFOUR'S FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF 317 

Universe or even Earth and Man on any set of homogeneous 
dogmas. It has been hotly criticised because it declines to 
accept as a new Book of Genesis all the so-called Darwinian 
hypotheses about the origins of living forms. For years 
Positivists have been engaged in showing the insufficiency 
of much that styles itself Agnosticism, Darwinism, Evolu- 
tion, and the like, as all being alien to a truly relative philoso- 
phy and leading to a moral paralysis of the religious emotions. 
As to Materialism, Positivism has continually denounced 
these sophisms as shallow and debasing. And yet Mr. Bal- 
four, who for many years has had controversies about Posi- 
tivism on his hands, again talks loosely of Agnosticism, 
Positivism, Empiricism, and Naturalism, as all amounting 
to much the same thing. In truth, he has no philosophical 
grasp of any one of these four very different schemes of 
thought. 

Confining myself strictly to Positivism, with which alone 
I am concerned, I begin by pointing out the fundamental 
misconception of Mr. Balfour in this passage above cited. 
The leading doctrines of Naturalism, he says, "are that we 
may know 'phenomena' and the laws by which they are 
connected, but nothing more." The only World of which 
we can have cognisance, according to Naturalism, "is that 
World which is revealed to us through perception, and which 
is the subject-matter of the 'Natural Sciences.'" And 
"phenomena" are "things and events, the general subject- 
matter of Natural Science." Now, SO far as Positivism is 
concerned, that is an entire perversion of the bases and the 
methods of its philosophy. The subject matter of Positivism 
embraces all things of which any thinking being is conscious. 
All facts of consciousness, all mental impressions and ideas 
of any kind are just as much its subject-matter as they arc 

that of any theologian or metaphysician. Positivism docs not 



318 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

limit the field of its subject-matter ; it excludes nothing cog- 
nisable or even recognisable by the brain ; it does not shut out 
any hypothesis. Everything that can be the subject of thought 
or consciousness is just as completely open to the Positivist to 
meditate upon as it can be to the theologian. The difference 
between Positivism and Theology lies not in the subject-matter 
of observation; for all things thinkable are the common 
subject-matter of both. The difference lies in their different 
canons of proof and methods of reasoning. 

What is the meaning of "Naturalism" being confined to 
the World which is revealed to us through "perception" the 
World which is the subject-matter of the " Natural Sciences' 1 '' ? 
"Perception" ought to mean the apprehension of phenomena 
directly or indirectly manifested to our senses. Now, Posi- 
tivism does not confine its belief to any such limited world. 
It admits all suggestions of the consciousness of every kind 
as amongst the material for meditation and reflection. Every 
hypothesis, every mental or moral instinct, is just as much a 
legitimate subject of study and logic to the Positivist as an 
object of sight or smell. All "things" are within the sphere 
of positive philosophy and religion for what they are worth. 
It may turn out that they are waking dreams, with no proof 
of reality behind them or within them : but they are not at 
all outside "the subject-matter" of the philosopher. 

Again, what is the meaning of the " subject-matter of the 
Natural Sciences"? The natural sciences mean, and ought 
to mean, the physical sciences — the sciences concerned with 
the interpretation of nature. Now, it would be a most 
enormous misconception to assert that Positivism is only 
concerned with the physical sciences. But then what do 
the "Natural Sciences" mean? Is Psychology one of the 
"natural sciences"? Is Ethics? Are the facts of the hu- 
man will, of Consciousness, of the imagination, and the 



MR. A. BALFOUR'S FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF 319 

conscience — are these the data of the "Natural Sciences"? 
Are all the social facts, the coincidences and uniformities in 
social progress, also the data of the "Natural Sciences"? 
It would be a very violent use of language to call our reason- 
ing about the emotions, about ideas, about the moral and 
social nature of Man, the relations of Man to the World — 
branches of the Natural Sciences. Yet Positivism is mainly 
and supremely occupied with these very things — things 
which, only by an outrageous misuse of philosophical lan- 
guage, can be called the subject-matter of the "Natural 
Sciences" — the world known to us through "perception." 
To make "natural science" cover the whole field of specu- 
lation about the mental, moral, and social nature of Man 
and his relation to the World, is a juggling with language. 
To say that Positivism excludes from its subject-matter the 
whole field of such speculations is a manifest misstatement of 
notorious facts. 

A similar ambiguity and petitio principii lurks in Mr. 
Balfour's use of the word "phenomena." Why are phe- 
nomena "things and events, the general subject-matter of 
Natural Science"? In modern philosophy, and certainly in 
the Positivist Philosophy, phenomena mean all facts what- 
ever of which we can take cognisance, which we perceive, 
meditate or reason upon, or become conscious of. As Mr. 
Mill said long ago, "the phenomena with which the science 
of human nature is conversant are the thoughts, feelings, 
and ad ions of human beings." It is a preposterous abuse 
of language to (all these thoughts, feelings, and actions of 
human beings the subject-matter of Natural (i.e. physical) 
Science. Phenomena comprehend all things which we ean 
perceive, think of, feel, or be conscious of. It is a very old 
and almost obsolete device of theologians to limit "phe- 
to things which the senses perceive, and to call 



320 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

" phenomenists " those who subject all phenomena whatever 
to logical verification. It is not the "phenomena" whereby 
schools of philosophy differ : it is in the verification of phe- 
nomena and the conclusions the mind infers from them. 

Why does Mr. Balfour talk of "knowing phenomena"? 
We do not know phenomena. We perceive, infer, reflect 
upon, or become conscious of phenomena. What we know 
is some relation between the phenomena, some truth of 
which the phenomenon is the first term. We know the 
syllogism, we do not know the names in our predicate. What 
is the meaning of " realities which are not phenomenal"? 
All realities are and must be phenomena. God and the 
Soul, says Mr. Balfour, are realities which are not phenom- 
enal. If God and the Soul are realities they are certainly 
phenomenal, for they can be shown by reasoning to exist. 
Even if they are inevitable hypotheses, to which the con- 
sciousness instinctively turns, they are phenomena of con- 
sciousness. Much, no doubt, may be said as to whether 
they are hypotheses which can be verified, or are simply 
answers given by ancient meditation on the World and Man. 
So far as Positivists are concerned, they express no definite 
opinion as to the first of these realities; but very stoutly 
maintain the reality of the second, as abundantly manifested 
both in reasoning and in consciousness. Positivists, let us 
assure Mr. Balfour, have a very strong and personal convic- 
tion of the reality of the phenomenon they call the Soul, 
resting not on a mythical revelation, but on a logical Psy- 
chology. 

In his fourth chapter, Mr. Balfour sums up the conclusions 
of Part L, which, he says, display "the pitiless glare of a 
creed like this" (Naturalism) ; and he gives in a short "cate- 
chism of the future" five propositions (A) representing 
"current teaching," and five propositions contra (B), repre- 



MR. A. BALFOUR'S FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF 32 1 

senting "the naturalistic theory." Now as to these five 
dogmas of Naturalism, marked B, Positivism repudiates 
every one with the utmost condemnation, not only repudiates 
these dogmas, but for years has been engaged in criticising 
and exposing them. Whether M. Haeckel and his so-called 
school have used language of the kind, whether some Agnos- 
tics and self-styled Darwinians or Evolutionists have laid 
themselves open to these criticisms, whether Mr. Kidd or 
Mr. Grant Allen and others have so represented "natural 
selection" and so forth, we need not inquire. Certainly, 
Positivists have never remotely adopted any of the dogmas 
(B) described as the "naturalistic" theory. Any one who 
will look at the Positivist Review will see a series of articles 
condemning any concession to any of these "naturalist" 
doctrines. Mr. Balfour's Part I., therefore, simply ascribes 
to Positivism opinions that it systematically repudiates. 

To take these five points of the "catechism of the future" 
(B). I. Positivism disclaims any such assertion as that 
"reason is to be found neither in the beginning of things 
nor in their end." It treats as ridiculous any assertion what- 
ever about the beginning of things or the end of things; it 
rejects as a silly bit of Metaphysics the hypothesis that the 
Universe is the casual result of blind chance, and it has 
called Atheism the most irrational form of theologism. Posi- 
tivism adopts no absolute doctrine of Necessity, nor does it 
take upon itself to deny that things are foreordained. It 
leaves the origin of the Universe and its government as a 
mystery, a problem as insoluble as the origin of God, of 
Matter, or of Man. II. Positivism repudiates as unphilo- 
sophical and immoral the dogma that "the universal ilux is 
ordered by blind causation alone." So far from asserting 
that throughout the world "reason is absent, so also is love," 
Dr. Bridges in the Positivist Review showed how Mind and 

Y 



322 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Love are perceptible in germ from the dawn of life. III. Still 
more monstrous as applied to Positivism is the third of Mr. 
Balfour's naturalistic dogmas, that the instincts, appetites, 
moralities, and superstitions evolved in the course of man's 
social development "air stand on an equality." Every word 
that Comte ever taught, or which has been professed by 
Positivists is directly to the contrary. The Positivist scheme 
of moral and social development simply rests on the control 
of the lower appetites, instincts, ideas, and beliefs by the 
higher. IV. Positivism rejects as idle metaphysical puzzles, 
all attempts to dogmatise about what Reason is in itself, or 
what Beauty is in the abstract. It does not call the first an 
"expedient for preserving the race," nor the second an 
"accident." It does not identify reason with "physiological 
processes," nor does it regard Beauty as a "poor jest played 
upon us by Nature." V. Lastly, Positivism rejects every 
one of the "Naturalist" dogmas set down by Mr. Balfour 
in B 5. It does not believe that "the individual perishes." 
It does believe that the race will endure without practical 
limits. It asserts that all conduct affects the destiny of the 
race. It denies that our ignorance makes us helpless, that 
our conduct was determined for us in a remote past, that we 
are impotent to foresee the consequences of our conduct. 
Every single doctrine which Mr. Balfour puts in the mouth 
of his "Naturalist" catechumen is vehemently denied by 
Positivists. And yet he says that Positivism and Naturalism 
are interchangeable terms. 

The Ethic of Positivism is not derived from Utilitarianism, 
nor from Natural Selection, nor the survival of the fittest, 
nor from evolution, nor from physical science. It is an 
independent science, the final, the noblest, the most com- 
plex science : its doctrines are not reducible to the terms of 
any natural, i.e. physical, science. It is wholly independent 



MR. A. BALFOUR'S FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF 323 

of any theory of the Origin of the Universe or any scheme 
of Universal Evolution. It flows from the natural supremacy 
and the moral nobility of the social emotions of mankind, 
the highest form of social instincts which are observable 
throughout the whole living series. The attempt to represent 
Positivist ethics as a device for securing some competitive 
advantage in the struggle for existence is a wild hallucina- 
tion of Mr. Balfour's own mind, as absurd as if one were to 
say that Unionism, Toryism, Imperialism, and Anglicanism 
are all schemes of thought which may be more properly 
termed Socialism — the ultimate triumph of which must 
degrade man to the level of the kangaroo and the hedgehog. 
That is no exaggeration of the confusion of Mr. Balfour's 
logic and the extravagance of Mr. Balfour's terrors. 

It is quite tiresome in this age to hear again that stale 
theatrical thunder about Free Will and Necessity, as if either 
view could decide, or even affect, any philosophical or reli- 
gious problem. Mr. Balfour repeats in the tones of some 
eloquent curate, fresh from the Honour Schools, the same 
grand phrases about the Freedom of the Will, which years 
ago were poured forth by Mr. Kingsley and Mr. Martineau. 
All healthy minds now admit, with Mill and Henry Sidg- 
wick, that there are insoluble difficulties in the way of any 
absolute doctrine either of Free Will or of Necessity, and 
that neither doctrine can be conclusive either in Ethics or 
in Theology. The abstract dogma of the Freedom of Will 
is in logic fatal to any rational system of Ethic as well as to 
any logical belief in Divine Omniscience. Positivism at any 
rate asserts no abstract dogma of Necessity. And it is droll 
indeed to find the old puzzle, about the Reign of Law being 
irreconcilable with the Freedom of the human Will, now put 
forward as a refutation of Positivism. Irreconcilable as these 
dogmas may be, Positivists fully accept both; and they 






324 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

have long ceased to trouble their minds about this obsolete 
conundrum. 

Enough has been said to show that, so far as Positivism 
is concerned, Mr. Balfour's criticism of Naturalism, which 
he says is another term for Positivism, has not the slightest 
application or meaning, because his so-called Naturalism 
and true Positivism have not a single belief in common. 
Whether any school or thinker holds any such Naturalism 
at all, does not concern us in this review. Whether these 
criticisms be true or not, they are certainly not new. We 
have long been accustomed to the same conventional dia- 
tribes. It remains to consider Mr. Balfour's own beliefs, 
or rather his infidelities; for in this enlarged edition of 
Philosophic Doubt, he frankly says, that much as he doubts 
about Naturalism, he is far from being certain about any 
antidote to it. The whole book is pervaded with the spirit 
of universal scepticism — a kind of despairing quietism. It 
is a prose and fin de siecle version of Omar Khayyam, that 
all we do and think vanishes into air like the wind. And 
so, since Man is a bubble, and Life a jest, let us — doubt- 
ingly and mockingly — put up with the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury and the Thirty-nine Articles; for these can hardly 
be greater shams and fallacies than everything else in Heaven 
and in Earth. 



XX 

HARRIET MARTINEAU'S POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY 

The reprint of Miss Martineau's version of the Philoso- 
phic Positive affords a convenient occasion for a few words 
as to this well-known and often reprinted work. 1 It has 
recently been added to the great series of Bohn's Libraries, 
which now number more than 750 volumes. The present 
edition is in three, instead of two, volumes but is otherwise 
a simple reprint of Miss Martineau's book of 1853. It is a 
reprint, not a revised edition. 

My own part in this publication is very small and quite 
incidental, and can be disposed of in few words I was 
invited to write a short biographical and bibliographical 
notice of Comte's fundamental work in a limited space, 
which I agreed to do on condition of being free to add a 
version of the last ten pages of the Philosophie, vol. vi., 
which Miss Martineau omitted for the reasons stated in her 
preface. I accordingly prepared the Introduction, pp. v.-xix. 
vol. i. of the reprint, and pp. 414-419 of vol. iii. The rest of 
the work I did not touch, nor did I see it in proof. 

Some persons may wish to have a revised and enlarged 
edition of Miss Martineau's version, and it may be useful 
to remind them of what this would imply. Miss Martineau's 
book is not a translation, but a very free condensation. It is 

1 The Positive, Philosophy of Augustc Comtc, freely translated and con- 
densed by Harriet Martineau, with an introduction by Frederic Harrison 
3 vols., G. Bell and Sons, 1895. New volumes of Bohn's Philosophical 
Library. 5s. each volume. 

325 



326 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

reduced to one-third of the bulk of the original, and in this 
process a great deal of Comte's elaborate provisos and 
qualifications disappear. Careful students of Comte are 
well aware how important these qualifications are for any 
exact understanding of Comte's system. Any one bold 
enough to revise Miss Martineau's version would be con- 
stantly confronted with the problem, which of the condensed 
paragraphs of Miss Martineau stood most in need of ampli- 
fication, which he could leave as they are, and how far 
vividness of impression should be sacrificed to accuracy and 
completeness of the author's meaning. Before he had 
solved this dilemma to his satisfaction, he would find that 
he had greatly increased the bulk, and had entirely lost the 
vigour of her condensation; and, in fact, that he had de- 
stroyed the character and purpose of her book. A revision 
of Miss Martineau would indeed mean a rewriting of the 
whole. There is perhaps hardly a page of it which the 
translators of the Politique Positive would not wish to vary 
or even to recast. But this is. a very big task, which the 
present writer at any rate was not invited to undertake and 
would hesitate to undertake. One day, no doubt, the 
Philosophie Positive will be fully and exactly translated; 
but there is no prospect of this being undertaken at present, 
even if there were any demand for it. It would need ample 
time and an encyclopaedic range of scientific training. 

It might seem a more manageable task to point out errors 
or very important omissions in Miss Martineau's version. 
All readers of the original are well aware that she made 
some serious slips, and, in search of a short cut to her author's 
meaning, often produced a different impression from that 
which he had designed. But careful collation of the two 
texts, French original and English condensation, will con- 
vince any competent reader that these points are so numer- 



MISS MARTINEAU'S COMTE 327 

ous, or else are so closely entwined in the language of the 
version, that they far exceed the limits or the resources of 
any possible table of Corrigenda, and could not be made 
intelligible without pages of new matter. It would be use- 
less to point out an error here and there, which would imply 
approval of the remainder unnoticed. Every careful reader 
of Miss Martineau's version knows, for instance, that in 
speaking of the organisation of the Catholic Church (vol. iii. 
p. 93) she wrote that it caused "the superiors to be chosen 
by the inferiors" whereas Comte obviously said the con- 
trary. There are not many slips of this kind, but few of 
them are so manifest and so easily corrected. Again, in a 
well-known place she substitutes the name of Shakespeare 
for that of Corneille. But as Comte used Corneille's name 
simply as an example of an eminent dramatist, the change 
is of no great consequence. On the whole, a careful reader 
will find that his list of corrigenda et addenda runs curiously 
near to become a scheme of rewriting the book. 

Miss Martineau's remarkable paraphrase must stand by 
itself and remain what she made it. It can no more be 
revised or rewritten than the original itself could be. It 
was made fifty -three years ago, when she knew nothing else 
of Comte's writing, and before the completion of the Poli- 
tique Positive. It is in vain for those who have assimilated 
Comte's later works to require from Miss Martineau what 
she had no qualifications to do, and what she never under- 
took or intended to do. Comte may have been somewhat 
hasty or indulgent in the praises he gave her work, and far 
too liberal in substituting her condensation for his own book. 
He has been scandalously repaid for his generosity by pre- 
tended philosophers who have elaborately criticised a work 
of which they never read a line in the original, and which 
they know only by a paraphrase. Hut the fad stands that 



328 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

in all subsequent editions of the Positivist Library, Miss 
Martineau's condensation is inserted and Comte's Philoso- 
phic Positive is not. And her version has been retranslated 
into French, and is adopted by Comte's French followers. 
At the present day, therefore, this version cannot be said to 
have been superseded, and it is not likely to be rewritten or 
revised. 

A much more serious problem would remain. Would it 
be worth while to attempt a revision of Miss Martineau's 
version without attempting to revise Auguste Comte's own 
original? And who is prepared to undertake this task? 
The rapid progress of the physical and social sciences within 
the last two generations, together with the multiplication and 
improvement in our mechanical instruments of knowledge, 
have so largely added to our means of special research that 
much of Comte's Philosophic is based upon conceptions in 
exact science which are now practically obsolete. This has 
not destroyed its value as Philosophy, but it effectually pre- 
vents us from treating it as if it were a scientific manual, a 
text -book of encyclopaedic knowledge up to date. This it is 
not, and was never intended to be. And Positivism would 
only end in a degrading obscurantism, worse than any theo- 
logical reaction, if it led its votaries into a superstitious idea 
that Auguste Comte, having appeared on earth, had finally 
closed the book of science in the year 1830. 

Remember that the Mathematics of the Philosophic Posi- 
tive appeared in 1830, the Astronomy and Physics in 1835, 
the Chemistry and Biology in 1838, so that the physical 
science of these three volumes is almost or quite seventy 
years old. Recall what has been accomplished in these 
seventy years by electricity, photography, spectrum analysis, 
modern measures of heat, weight, and force, molecular 
analysis, Embryology, Bacteriology, the theory of Cell and 



MISS MARTINEAU'S COMTE 329 

Protoplasm and Evolution, — recall the discoveries of the 
Herschels, of Helmholtz, Kirchhoff, Thomson, Dumas, Pas- 
teur, Owen, Darwin — and we shall feel how great an epoch 
separates the science of 1830 from the science of to-day. 
Comte made no attempt to present mankind with a vade 
mecurn of science in the year 1830. But in attempting a co- 
ordination or philosophy of the sciences, in tracing their 
filiation, evolution, and mutual relations, he could only start 
from the state of contemporary science, that is, the state of 
science seventy years ago. The immense improvements in 
our means of observation, and the discoveries of the last 
seventy years, have not perhaps effected a revolution in our 
knowledge so great as some specialists pretend, and as the 
ignorant believe. But of course they have in many things 
altered the point of view of competent men of science. 

In carrying out his wonderful colligation of the sciences, 
Auguste Comte was at times too confident of his data, and 
he undoubtedly hazarded some premature generalisations; 
and, in two sciences, at least, he had little to go upon save con- 
clusions that have in our day been virtually recast, and in part 
superseded. These two sciences are Physics and Chemistry. 
In Mathematics his data need no modification at all: in 
Astronomy very little : and even in Biology his results are 
far less affected by modern research than followers of Haeckel 
and of Huxley might be led to suppose. Both the amount 
and the effect on his speculations of Comte's scientific short- 
comings have been much exaggerated by some of his most 
hostile critics. As his business was not to teach the special 
sciences, but to initiate a scheme of general philosophy, he was 
not called upon to dogmatise on specific observations, but to 
trace analogies, classify, and coordinate general laws. In do- 
ing this the use of an illustration or a deduction now shown 
to be obsolete, signifies less than would appear at first sight. 



330 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

A great deal has been said about Comte's rather prema- 
ture remark "that we can never know the chemical com- 
position of the stars." It is the fashion to refer triumphantly 
to the revelations of the Spectrum. But if we look at what 
Comte says in his opening remarks on Astronomy (vol. ii. 
chap, i., 1835) we shall see that his general conception is not 
unworthy of a philosopher. In Astronomy, he says, our sole 
method of research is limited by our means of visual obser- 
vation. This of course remains true. " We may conceivably 
ascertain," he says, "the form, distances, size, and move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies. But we never can study their 
chemical composition, their mineralogical structure, and still 
less the nature of any organic bodies on their surface. That 
is to say, our positive knowledge of the stars is limited to the 
geometric and mechanical phenomena they exhibit, and we 
cannot extend to them the physical, chemical, physiological, 
and even social form of knowledge that we can obtain from 
objects within our other means of observation." Now here 
is an obvious error, in so far as the spectrum does lead us 
to infer the presence in the stars of various gases and ele- 
ments, though we are only just enabled to infer that in a 
general way. This hardly amounts to being able "to study 
the chemical composition" of these bodies with all the re- 
sources of the laboratory. It is a wonderful and interesting 
discovery, but it does not go very far. It falls very far short 
of any effective Chemistry of the Stars, and one of the greatest 
of living authorities has warned the British Association how 
very cautious astronomers must be in attempting to generalise 
too definitely as to the indications of the Spectrum. Comte 
certainly made an error, and a rash forecast, just as a few 
years ago a philosopher would have erred who should have 
said we shall never be able to see into the skeleton of living 
beings ! But this error of Comte does not destroy — it 



MISS MARTINEAU'S COMTE 331 

hardly weakens — the value of his general remarks on the 
field of Astronomy. 

There is no doubt a want of philosophical caution in the 
negative prophecy that Comte hazarded ; for philosophers, 
like politicians, ought never to use the word never — "or 
hardly ever." But there are far more doubtful statements 
than this to be found in the second and third volumes of 
Comte's Philosophie. I am not disposed, for my part, to 
regard the Physique and the Chimie as anything more than 
an interesting sketch of a possible synthesis of the two 
sciences — a sketch which now has mainly a historic value. 
Both these sciences have been practically recast since the 
last sixty years; and it is safer to study the more general 
outline of them given in the Politique Positive, where they 
are condensed as Cosmolcgie in less than fifty pages. The 
Biologie, in spite of all that the science owes to the biologists 
of the last two generations in Europe, is no doubt much less 
affected than the Physics or the Chemistry. But we had better 
accept it as a general proviso in reading the Philosophie Positive 
that the co-ordination of the Physical Sciences there sketched 
out was necessarily based on data now more or less obsolete. 

But, I repeat, the work of Comte was to initiate a Philoso- 
phy, not to teach any special science. No one denies that 
the philosophical intuitions of Aristotle have profound value 
and interest for us to-day, though based on physical and 
biological resources so rudimentary as his were. This is 
even more- true of the conceptions of Hippocrates and Archi- 
medes, in spite of their very primitive science. The same is 
true of the suggestions of Bacon and of Descartes, whose 
works arc .strewn with hypotheses thai we now know to be 
wildly absurd. Newton's speculations about Light and 

Molecular Physics are not worthless, although they are not 

true. Nor are the physical and biological thoughts of Goethe 



332 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

rubbish, because he lived before Helmholtz and Darwin. We 
need not suppose that Comte's errors and ignorances are 
anything like so startling as those of Aristotle, Bacon, and 
Descartes. All the sciences were in a state far more ready 
for systematisation in the days of Comte than they were in 
the infancy of science in the times of these mighty philoso- 
phers. But it would be ridiculous and degrading to us to 
hesitate to admit that there are errors and ignorances in the re- 
view of the physical sciences made by Comte seventy years ago. 
As to the special contribution of Comte to philosophy — 
his institution of Sociology, which occupies three of his six 
volumes in the Philosophie, and nearly the whole of the four 
volumes of the Politique — something else has to be said. 
Here again, we must remember that Comte claimed to have 
instituted this new science of society, not to have constituted 
it. Again, I am not prepared to deny that it contains de- 
fective and unproven generalisations — errors and ignorances, 
if it is wished so to call them. It would be ridiculous and 
degrading in us to suppose it to be an infallible and final 
revelation of truth. But its shortcomings are not the result 
of subsequent discoveries or the labours of sociologists since 
the time of Comte. The social science of the Philosophie 
was completed in 1842, and that of the Politique in 1854. 
And in spite of the researches in History and in Sociology 
of the last fifty years, I do not see that the data used by 
Comte have been very materially amended or recast. This, 
however, is the case with the second and third volume of 
his Philosophie; and they must always be studied subject 
to this qualification. The great achievement of the Philoso- 
phie will always be found in the three latter volumes, in the 
masterly scheme for the new science of Sociology, and what 
Mr. Mill was forced to call "the extraordinary merit of his 
historical analysis." 



XXI 

THE GHOST OF RELIGION 

This and the following essay form the discussion with Mr. 
Herbert Spencer and others which appeared in the "Nine- 
teenth Century" 1884, vols. xv. and xvi. (Nos. 83, 85, 
88, 91, 93). Mr. Spencer had my essays and his own 
reprinted, with notes by himself and his friends, New 
York, 1885. After the lapse of twenty-three years, and 
careful reconsideration of all the essays, I reprint my own. 
I have again carefully studied Mr. Spencer's replies and 
his defence, but I find no reason to retract anything I 
urged, or to modify anything here set forth. 

In the eighty-third number of the Nineteenth Century, 
vol. xv., 1884, there was to be found an article on Religion 
which justly awakened a profound and sustained interest. 
The creed of Agnosticism was there formulated anew by the 
acknowledged head of the Evolution philosophy, with a 
definiteness such as perhaps it never wore before. To my 
mind there is nothing in the whole range of modern religious 
discussion more cogent and more suggestive than the array 
of conclusions, the final outcome of which is marshalled in 
those twelve pages. Jt is the last word of the Agnostic 
philosophy in its long controversy with Theology. That 
word is decisive, and it is hard to conceive how Theology 
can rally for another bout from such a sorites of dilemma as 

is there presented. My own humble purpose is not to criti- 
cise this paper, but to point its practical moral, and, if I 

333 



334 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

may, to add to it a rider of my own. As a summary of 
philosophical conclusions on the theological problem, it 
seems to me frankly unanswerable. Speaking generally, I 
shall now dispute no part of it but one word, and that is the 
title. It is entitled " Religion." To me it is rather the 
Ghost of Religion. Religion as a living force lies in a dif- 
ferent sphere. 

The essay, which is packed with thought to a degree un- 
usual even with Mr. Herbert Spencer, contains evidently 
three parts. The first deals with the historical Evolution 
of Religion, of which Mr. Spencer traces the germs in the 
primitive belief in ghosts. The second arrays the moral and 
intellectual dilemmas involved in all anthropomorphic theol- 
ogy into one long catena of difficulty, out of which it is hard 
to conceive any free mind emerging with success. The third 
part deals with the evolution of Religion in the future, and 
formulates, more precisely than has ever yet been effected, 
the positive creed of Agnostic philosophy. 

Has, then, the Agnostic a positive creed? It would seem 
so; for Mr. Spencer brings us at last "to the one absolute 
certainty, the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, 
from which all things proceed." But let no one suppose 
that this is merely a new name for the Great First Cause of 
so many theologies and metaphysics. In spite of the capital 
letters, and the use of theological terms as old as Isaiah or 
Athanasius, Mr. Spencer's Energy has no analogy with God. 
It is Eternal, Infinite, and Incomprehensible; but still it is 
not He, but It. It remains always Energy, Force, nothing 
anthropomorphic; such as electricity, or anything else that 
we might conceive as the ultimate basis of all the physical 
forces. None of the positive attributes which have ever been 
predicated of God can be used of this Energy. Neither 
goodness, nor wisdom, nor justice, nor consciousness, nor 



THE GHOST OF RELIGION 335 

will, nor life, can be ascribed, even by analogy, to this Force. 
Now a force to which we cannot apply the ideas of goodness, 
wisdom, justice, consciousness, or life, any more than we can 
to a circle, is certainly not God, has no analogy with God, 
nor even with what Pope has called the "Great First Cause, 
least understood." It shares some of the negative attributes 
of God and First Cause, but no positive one. It is, in fact, 
only the Unknowable a little more denned ; though I do not 
remember that Mr. Spencer, or any evolution philosopher, 
has ever formulated the Unknowable in terms with so deep 
a theological ring as we hear in the phrase " Infinite and 
Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed." 

The terms do seem, perhaps, rather needlessly big and 
absolute. And fully accepting Mr. Spencer's logical canons, 
one does not see why it should be called an "absolute cer- 
tainty." "Practical belief" satisfies me; and I doubt the 
legitimacy of substituting for it "absolute certainty." "In- 
finite" and "Eternal," also, can mean to Mr. Spencer noth- 
ing more than "to which we know no limits, no beginning or 
end," and, for my part, I prefer to say this. Again, "an 
Energy" — why an Energy? The Unknowable may cer- 
tainly consist of more than one energy. To assert the pres- 
ence of one uniform energy is to profess to know something 
very important about the Unknowable : that it is homogeneous, 
and even identical, throughout the Universe. And then, 
"from which all things proceed" is perhaps a rather equivo- 
cal reversion to the theologic type. In the Athanasian Creed 
the Third Person "proceeds" from the First and the Second. 
But this process has always been treated as a mystery; and 
it would be safer to avoid the phrases of mysticism. Lei us 
keep the old word-, for \vc all mean much the same thing; 
and I prefer to put it thus. All observations and meditation, 
Science and Philosophy, bring us "to the practical belief 'that 



336 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

man is ever in the presence of some energy or energies, of which 
he knows nothing, and to which therefore he would be wise to 
assign no limits, conditions, or functions." This is, doubt- 
less, what Mr. Spencer himself means. For my part, I pre- 
fer his old term, the Unknowable. Though I have always 
thought that it would be more philosophical not to assert 
of the Unknown that it is Unknowable. And, indeed, I 
would rather not use the capital letter, but stick literally to our 
evidence, and say frankly "the unknown." 

Thus viewed, the attempt, so to speak, to put a little unction 
into the Unknowable is hardly worth the philosophical in- 
accuracy it involves ; and such is the drawback to any use of 
picturesque language. So stated, the positive creed of Ag- 
nosticism still retains its negative character. It has a series 
of propositions and terms, every one of which is a negation. 
A friend of my own, who was much pressed to say how much 
of the Athanasian Creed he still accepted, once said that he 
clung to the idea "that there was a sort of a something." 
In homely words such as the unlearned can understand, that 
is precisely what the religion of the Agnostic comes to, "the 
belief that there is a sort of a something, about which we can 
know nothing." 

Now let us profess that, as a philosophical answer to the 
theological problem, that is entirely our own position. The 
Positivist answer is of course the same as the Agnostic answer. 
Why, then, do we object to be called Agnostics? Simply 
because Agnostic is only dog-Greek for "don't know," and 
we have no taste to be called "don't knows." The Church 
organ calls us Agnostics, but that is only by way of prejudice. 
Our religion does not consist in a comprehensive negation; 
we are not for ever replying to the theological problem; 
we are quite unconcerned by the theological problem, and 
have something that we do care for, and do know. English- 



THE GHOST OF RELIGION 337 

men are Europeans, and many of them are Christians, and 
they usually prefer to call themselves Englishmen, Christians, 
or the like, rather than non-Asiatics or anti-Mahometans. 
Some people still prefer to call themselves Protestants rather 
than Christians, but the taste is dying out, except amongst 
Irish Orangemen, and even the Nonconformist newspaper 
has been induced by Mr. Matthew Arnold to drop its famous 
motto: "The dissidence of Dissent, and the Protestantism 
of the Protestant religion." For a man to say that his reli- 
gion is Agnosticism is simply the sceptical equivalent of saying 
that his religion is Protestantism. Both mean that his reli- 
gion is to deny and to differ. But this is not religion. The 
business of religion is to affirm and to unite, and nothing can 
be religion but that which at once affirms truth and unites 
men. 

The purpose of the present essay is to show that Agnosticism, 
though a valid and final answer to the theological or ontological 
problem — "what is the ultimate cause of the world and of 
man?" — is not a religion nor the shadow of a religion. It 
offers none of the rudiments or elements of religion, and 
religion is not to be found in that line at all. It is the mere 
disembodied spirit of dead religion : as was said at the outset, 
it is the ghost of religion. Agnosticism, perfectly legitimate 
as the true answer of science to an effete question, has shown 
us that religion is not to be found anywhere within the realm 
of Law. Having brought us to the answer, "no cause that 
we know of," it is laughable to call that negation religion. 
Mr. Mark Pattison, one of the acutesl minds of modern Ox- 
ford, rather oddly says that the idea of deity has now been 
"defecated to a pure transparency." The evolution philoso- 
phy goes a step further and defecate- the idea of cause to a 
pure transparency. Theology and ontology alike end In the 
Everlasting No with which science confronts all their asser- 



338 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

tions. But how whimsical is it to tell us that religion, which 
cannot find any resting-place in theology or ontology, is to 
find its true home in the Everlasting No ! That which is 
defecated to a pure transparency can never supply a reli- 
gion to any human being but a philosopher constructing a 
system. It is quite conceivable that religion is to end with 
theology, and both might in the course of evolution become 
an anachronism. But if religion there is still to be, it cannot 
be found in this No-man's-land and Know-nothing creed. 
Better bury religion at once than let its ghost walk uneasy in 
our dreams. 

The true lesson is that we must hark back, and leave the 
realm of cause. The accident of religion has been mistaken 
for the essence of religion. The essence of religion is not to 
answer a question, but to govern and unite men and societies 
by giving them common beliefs and duties. Theologies tried 
to do this, and long did it, by resting on certain answers to 
certain questions. The progress of thought has upset one 
answer after another, and now the final verdict of philosophy 
is that all the answers are unmeaning, and that no rational 
answer can be given. It follows, then, that questions and 
answers, being but accidents of religion, must both be given 
up. A base of belief and duty must be looked for elsewhere, 
and when this has been found, then again religion will succeed 
in governing and uniting men. Where is this base to be 
found ? Since the realm of Cause has failed to give us foot- 
hold, we must fall back upon the Realm of Law — social, 
moral, and mental law, and not merely physical. Religion 
consists, not in answering certain questions, but in making 
men of a certain quality. And the law, moral, mental, social, 
is pre-eminently the field wherein men may be governed and 
united. Hence to the religion of Cause there succeeds the reli- 
gion of Law. But the religion of Law or Science is Positivism. 



THE GHOST OF RELIGION 339 

It is no part of my purpose to criticise Mr. Spencer's 
memorable essay, except so far as it is necessary to show that 
that which is a sound philosophical conclusion is not religion, 
simply by reason that it relates to the subject-matter of the- 
ology. But a few words may be suffered as to the historical 
evolution of religion. To many persons it will sound rather 
whimsical, and possibly almost a sneer, to trace the germs 
of religion to the ghost-theory. Our friends of the Psychical 
Research will prick up their ears, and expect to be taken au 
grand serieux. But the conception is a thoroughly solid one, 
and of most suggestive kind. Beyond all doubt, the hypothe- 
sis of quasi-human immaterial spirits working within and 
behind familiar phenomena did take its rise from the idea of 
the other self which the imagination continually presents to 
the early reflections of man. And, beyond all doubt, the 
phenomena of dreams, and the gradual construction of a 
theory of ghosts, is a very impressive and vivid form of the 
notion of the other self. It would, I think, be wrong to assert 
that it is the only form of the notion, and one can hardly sup- 
pose that Mr. Spencer would limit himself to that. But, in 
any case, the construction of a coherent theory of ghosts is 
a typical instance of a belief in a quasi-human spirit-world. 
Glorify and amplify this idea, and apply it to the whole of 
nature, and we get a god-world, a multitude of superhuman 
divine spirits. 

That is the philosophical explanation of the rise of theology, 
of the peopling of Nature with divine spirits. But docs it 
explain the rise of Religion? No, for theology and religion 
arc not conterminous. Mr. Spencer has unwittingly conceded 
to the divines that which they assume so confidently — that 
theology is the same thing as religion, and that there was no 
religion at all until there \va. a belief in superhuman spirits 
within and behind Nature. This is obviously an oversight. 



340 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

We have to go very much further back for the genesis of reli- 
gion. There were countless centuries of time, and there were, 
and there are, countless millions of men for whom no doctrine 
of superhuman spirits ever took coherent form. In all these 
ages and races, probably by far the most numerous that our 
planet has witnessed, there was religion in all kinds of definite 
form. Comte calls it Fetichism — terms are not important: 
roughly, we may call it Nature-worship. The religion in all 
these types was the belief and worship not of spirits of any kind, 
not of any immaterial, imagined being inside things, but of 
the actual visible things themselves — trees, stones, rivers, 
mountains, earth, fire, stars, sun, and sky. Some of the most 
abiding and powerful of all religions have consisted in elabo- 
rate worship of these physical objects treated frankly as physi- 
cal objects, without trace of ghost, spirit, or god. To say 
nothing of fire-worship, river-, and tree-worship, the venerable 
religion of China, far the most vast of all systematic religions, 
is wholly based on reverence for Earth, Sky, and ancestors 
treated objectively, and not as the abode of subjective im- 
material spirits. 

Hence the origin of religion is to be sought in the countless 
ages before the rise of theology; before spirits, ghosts, or 
gods ever took definite form in the human mind. The primi- 
tive uncultured man frankly worshipped external objects in 
love and in fear, ascribing to them quasi-human powers and 
feelings. All that we read about Animism, ghosts, spirits, 
and universal ideas of godhead in this truly primitive stage are 
metaphysical assumptions of men trying to read the ideas of 
later epochs into the facts of an earlier epoch. Nothing is 
more certain than that man everywhere started with a simple 
worship of natural objects. And the bearing of this on the 
future of religion is decisive. The religion of man in the vast 
cycles of primitive ages was reverence for Nature as influencing 



THE GHOST OF RELIGION 341 

Man. The religion of man in the vast cycles that are to come 
will be the reverence for Humanity as supported by Nature. 

The religion of man in the twenty or thirty centuries of 
Theology was reverence for the assumed authors or controllers 
of Nature. But, that assumption having broken down, reli- 
gion does not break up with it. On the contrary, it enters on 
a far greater and more potent career, inasmuch as the natural 
emotions of the human heart are now combined with the cer- 
tainty of scientific knowledge. The final religion of en- 
lightened man is the systematised and scientific form of the 
spontaneous religion of natural man. Both rest on the same 
elements — belief in the Power which controls his life, and 
grateful reverence for the Power so acknowledged. The 
primitive man thought that Power to be the object of Nature 
affecting Man. The cultured man knows that Power to be 
Humanity itself, controlling and controlled by nature accord- 
ing to natural law. The transitional and perpetually chang- 
ing creed of Theology has been an interlude. Agnosticism 
has uttered its epilogue. But Agnosticism is no more reli- 
gion than differentiation or the nebular hypothesis is religion. 

We have only to see what are the elements and ends of 
religion to recognise that we cannot find it in the negative 
and the unknown. In any reasonable use of language re- 
ligion implies some kind of belief in a Power outside our- 
selves, some kind of awe and gratitude felt for that Power, 
some kind of influence exerted by it over our lives. There 
are always in some sort these three elements — belief, wor- 
ship, conduct. A religion which gives us nothing in particu- 
lar to believe, nothing as an object of awe and gratitude, 
which has no special relation to human duty, is not a religion 
at all. It maybe formula, a generalisation, a logical postulate; 
but it i- not a religion. The universal presence of the unknow- 
able (or rather of the unknown) substratum is not a religion. 



342 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

It is a logical postulate. You may call it, if you please, the 
first axiom of science, a law of the human mind, or perhaps 
better the universal postulate of philosophy. But try it by 
every test which indicates religion and you will find it wanting. 

The points which the Unknowable has in common with the 
object of any religion are very slight and superficial. As the 
universal substratum it has some analogy with other super- 
human objects of worship. But Force, Gravitation, Atom, 
Undulation, Vibration, and other abstract notions have much 
the same kind of analogy, but nobody ever dreamed of a 
religion of gravitation, or the worship of molecules. The 
Unknowable has managed to get itself spelt with a capital 
U; but Carlyle taught us to spell the Everlasting No with 
capitals also. The Unknowable is no doubt mysterious, 
and Godhead is mysterious. It certainly appeals to the 
sense of wonder, and the Trinity appeals to the sense of won- 
der. It suggests vague and infinite extension, as does the 
idea of deity : but then Time and Space equally suggest vague 
and infinite extension. Yet no one but a delirious Kantist 
ever professed that Time and Space were his religion. These 
seem all the qualities which the Unknowable has in common 
with objects of worship — ubiquity, mystery, and immensity. 
But these qualities it shares with some other postulates of 
thought. 

But try it by all the other recognised tests of religion. 
Religion is not made up of wonder, or of a vague sense of 
immensity, unsatisfied yearning after infinity. Theology, 
seeking a refuge in the unintelligible, has no doubt accus- 
tomed this generation to imagine that a yearning after infinity 
is the sum and substance of religion. But that is a metaphysi- 
cal disease of the age. And there is no reason that philoso- 
phers should accept this hysterical piece of transcendentalism, 
and assume that they have found the field of religion when 



THE GHOST OF RELIGION 343 

they have found a field for unquenchable yearning after in- 
finity. Wonder has its place in religion, and so has mystery ; 
but it is a subordinate place. The roots and fibres of religion 
are to be found in love, awe, sympathy, gratitude, conscious- 
ness of inferiority and of dependence, community of will, 
acceptance of control, manifestation of purpose, reverence 
for majesty, goodness, creative energy, and life. Where 
these things are not, religion is not. 

Let us take each one of these three elements of religion — 
belief, worship, conduct — and try them all in turn as ap- 
plicable to the Unknowable. How mere a phrase must any 
religion be of which neither belief, nor worship, nor conduct 
can be spoken ! Imagine a religion which can have no be- 
lievers, because, ex hypothesi, its adepts are forbidden to be- 
lieve anything about it. Imagine a religion which excludes 
the idea of worship because its sole dogma is the infinity of 
Nothingness. Although the Unknowable is logically said to 
be Something, yet the something of which we neither know 
nor conceive anything is practically nothing. Lastly, imag- 
ine a religion which can have no relation to conduct ; for ob- 
viously the Unknowable can give us no intelligible help to 
conduct, and ex vi termini can have no bearing on conduct. 
A religion which could not make any one any better, which 
would leave the human heart and human society just as it 
found them, which left no foothold for devotion, and none for 
faith; which could have no creed, no doctrines, no temples, 
no priests, no teachers, no rites, no morality, no beauty, no 
hope, no consolation; which is summed up in one dogma — 
the Unknowable i> everywhere, and Evolution is its prophet 
■ — this is indeed " to defecate religion to a pure transparency." 

The growing weakness of religion has long been that it is 
being thrust inch by inch off the platform of knowledge; and 
we watch with sympathy the desperate efforts of all religious 



344 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

spirits to maintain the relations between knowledge and reli- 
gion. And now it hears the invitation of Evolution to aban- 
don the domain of knowledge, and to migrate to the domain 
of no-knowledge. The true Rock of Ages, says the philoso- 
pher, is the Unknowable. To the eye of Faith all things are 
henceforth cucaTaXrj'^Ca, as 1 Cicero calls it. The paradox 
would hardly be greater if we were told that true religion con- 
sisted in unlimited Vice. 

What is religion for ? Why do we want it ? And what do 
we expect it to do for us ? If it can give us no sure ground for 
our minds to rest on, nothing to purify the heart, to exalt the 
sense of sympathy, to deepen our sense of beauty, to strengthen 
our resolves, to chasten us into resignation, and to kindle a 
spirit of self-sacrifice — what is the good of it ? The Un- 
knowable, ex hypothesi, can do none of these things. The 
object of all religion, in any known variety of religion, has 
invariably had some quasi-human and sympathetic relation 
to man and human life. It follows from the very meaning 
of religion that it could not effect any of its work without 
such quality or relation. It would be hardly sane to make a 
religion out of the Equator or the Binomial theorem. Whether 
it was the religion of the lowest savage, of the Polytheist, or of 
the Hegelian Theist ; whether the object of the worship were 
a river, the Moon, the Sky, Apollo, Thor, God, or First Cause, 
there has always been some chain of sympathy — influence 
on the one side, and veneration on the other. 

However rudimentary, there must be a belief in some Power 
influencing the believer, whose influence he repays with awe 
and gratitude and a desire to conform his life thereto. But 
to make a religion out of the Unknowable is far more extrava- 
gant than to make it out of the Equator. We know some- 
thing of the Equator ; it influences seamen, equatorial peo- 
ples, and geographers not a little, and we all hesitate, as 



^ 



THE GHOST OF RELIGION 345 

was once said, to speak disrespectfully of the Equator. But 
would it be blasphemy to speak disrespectfully of the Un- 
knowable ? Our minds are a blank about it. As to acknow- 
ledging the Unknowable, or trusting in it, or feeling its influ- 
ence over us, or paying gratitude to it, or conforming our lives 
to it, or looking to it for help — the use of such words about it 
is unmeaning. We can wonder at it, as the child wonders at 
the " twinkling star," and that is all. It is a religion only to 
stare at. 

Religion is not a thing of star-gazing and staring, but of 
life and action. And the condition of any such effect on our 
lives and our hearts is some sort of vital quality in that which 
is the object of the religion. The mountain, sun, or sky 
which untutored man worships is thought to have some sort 
of vital quality, some potency of the kind possessed by organic 
beings. When mountain, sun, and sky cease to have this 
vital potency, educated man ceases to worship them. Of 
course all sorts and conditions of divine spirits are assumed in a 
pre-eminent degree to have this quality, and hence the tremen- 
dous force exerted by all religions of divine spirits. Philoso- 
phy and the euthanasia of theology have certainly reduced 
this vital quality to a minimum in our day, and I suppose 
Dean MansePs Bampton Lectures touched the low- water 
mark of vitality as predicated of the Divine Being. Of all 
modern theologians, the Dean came the nearest to the Evolu- 
tion negation. But there is a gulf which separates even his 
all-negative deity from Mr. Spencer's impersonal, unconscious, 
unthinking, and unthinkable Energy. 

Knowledge is of course wholly within the sphere of the 
Known. Our moral and social science is, of course, within 
the sphere of knowledge. Moral and social well being, moral 

and social education, progress, perfection naturally rest on 
moral and social science. Civilisation rests on moral and 



346 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

social progress. And happiness can only be secured by both. 
But if religion has its sphere in the Unknown and Unknow- 
able, it is thereby outside all this field of the Known. In 
other w r ords, Religion (of the Unknowable type) is ex hy- 
pothesi outside the sphere of knowledge, of civilisation, of 
social discipline, of morality, of progress, and of happiness. 
It has no part or parcel in human life. It fills a brief and 
mysterious chapter in a system of philosophy. 

By their fruits you shall know them — is true of all sorts 
of religion. And what are the fruits of the Unknowable 
but the Dead Sea apples? Obviously it can teach us noth- 
ing, influence us in nothing, for the absolutely incalculable 
and unintelligible can give us neither ground for action nor 
thought. Nor can it touch any one of our feelings but that 
of wonder, mystery, and sense of human helplessness. Help- 
less, objectless, apathetic wonder at an inscrutable infinity 
may be attractive to a metaphysical divine; but it does not 
sound like a working force in the world. Does the Evolu- 
tionist commune with the Unknowable in the secret silence 
of his chamber ? Does he meditate on it, saying, in quietness 
and confidence shall be your strength? One would like to 
see the new Imitatio Ignoti. It was said of old, Ignotum 
omne pro magnifico. But the new version is to be Ignotum 
onine pro divino. 

One would like to know how much of the Evolutionist's 
day is consecrated to seeking the Unknowable in a devout 
way, and what the religious exercises might be. How does 
the man of science approach the All-Nothingness? and the 
microscopist, and the embryologist, and the vivisectionist ? 
What do they learn about it, what strength or comfort does it 
give them ? Nothing — nothing : it is an ever-present conun- 
drum to be everlastingly given up, and perpetually to be asked 
of oneself and one's neighbours, but without waiting for the 



THE GHOST OF RELIGION 347 

answer. Tantalus and Sisyphus bore their insoluble tasks, 
and the Evolutionist carries about his riddle without an answer, 
his unquenchable thirst to know that which he only knows 
he can never know. Quisque suos patimur Manes. But 
Tantalus and Sisyphus called it Hell and the retribution of the 
Gods. The Evolutionist calls it Religion, and one might 
almost say Paradise. 

A child comes up to our Evolutionist friend, looks up in 
his wise and meditative face, and says, "Oh ! wise and great 
Master, what is religion?" And he tells that child, It is the 
presence of the Unknowable. "But what," asks the child, 
"am I to believe about it?" "Believe that you can never 
know anything about it." "But how I am to learn to do 
my duty?" "Oh! for duty you must turn to the known, 
to moral and social science." And a mother wrung with agony 
for the loss of her child, or the wife crushed by the death 
of her children's father, or the helpless and the oppressed, 
the poor and the needy, men, women, and children, in sorrow, 
doubt, and want, longing for something to comfort them and 
to guide them, something to believe in, to hope for, to love, 
and to worship — they come to our philosopher and they say, 
"Your men of science have routed our priests, and have 
silenced our old teachers. What religious faith do you give 
us in its place?" And the philosopher replies (his full heart 
bleeding for them) and he says, "Think on the Unknow- 
able." 

And in the hour of pain, danger, or death, can any one 
think of the Unknowable, hope anything of the Unknowable, 
or find any consolation therein? Altars might be built to 
some Unknown God, conceived as a real being, knowing us, 
though not known by US yet. But altars to the unknowable 
infinity, even metaphorical altars, are impossible, for this un- 
known can never be known, and we have not the smallest 



348 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

reason to imagine that it either knew us, or affects us, or any- 
body, or anything. As the Unknowable cannot bring men 
together in a common belief, or for common purposes, or kin- 
dred feeling, it can no more unite men than the precession 
of the equinoxes can unite them. So there can never be con- 
gregations of Unknowable worshippers, nor churches dedi- 
cated to the Holy Unknowable, nor images nor symbols of 
the Unknowable mystery. Yes ! there is one symbol of the 
Infinite Unknowable, and it is perhaps the most definite 
and ultimate word that can be said about it. The precise 
and yet inexhaustible language of mathematics enables us to 
express, in a common algebraic formula, the exact combination 
of the unknown raised to its highest power of infinity. That 
formula is (x n ), and here we have the beginning and perhaps 
the end of a symbolism for the religion of the Infinite Un- 
knowable. Schools, academies, temples of the Unknowable, 
there cannot be. But where two or three are gathered to- 
gether to worship the Unknowable, there the algebraic for- 
mula may suffice to give form to their emotions : they may be 
heard to profess their unwearying belief in (x n ), even if no 
weak brother with ritualist tendencies be heard to cry, "O 
x n , love us, help us, make us one with thee !" 

These things have their serious side, and suggest the 
real difficulties in the way of the theory. The alternative is 
this : Is religion a mode of answering a question in ontology, 
or is it an institution for affecting human life by acting on the 
human spirit ? If it be the latter, then there can be no religion 
of the Unknowable, and the sphere of religion must be sought 
elsewhere in the Knowable. We may accept with the ut- 
most confidence all that the evolution philosophy asserts and 
denies as to the perpetual indications of an ultimate energy, 
omnipresent and unlimited, and, so far as we can see, 
of inscrutable mysteriousness. That remains an ultimate 



THE GHOST OF RELIGION 349 

scientific idea, one no doubt of profound importance. But 
why should this idea be dignified with the name of religion, 
when it has not one of the elements of religion, except infinity 
and mystery? The hallowed name of religion has meant, 
in a thousand languages, man's deepest convictions, his surest 
hopes, the most sacred yearnings of his heart, that which can 
bind in brotherhood generations of men, comfort the father- 
less and the widow, uphold the martyr at the stake, and the 
hero in his long battle. Why retain this magnificent word, 
rich with the associations of all that is great, pure, and lovely 
in human nature, if it is to be henceforth limited to an idea, 
that can only be expressed by the formula (x n ) ; and which 
by the hypothesis can have nothing to do with either know- 
ledge, belief, sympathy, hope, life, duty, or happiness? It 
is not religion, this. It is a logician's artifice to escape from 
an awkward dilemma. 

One word in conclusion to those who would see religion 
a working reality, and not a logical artifice. The startling 
reductio ad absurdum of relegating religion to the unknowable 
is only the last step in the process which has gradually reduced 
religion to an incomprehensible minimum. And this has been 
the work of theologians obstinately fighting a losing battle, 
and withdrawing at every defeat into a more impregnable and 
narrower fastness. They have thrown over one after another 
the claims of religion and the attributes of divinity. They are 
so hopeless of continuing the contest on the open field of 
the known that they more and more seek to withdraw to the 
cloud-world of the transcendental. They are so terribly 
afraid of an anthropomorphic God that they have sublimated 
him into a metaphorical expression — "defecated the idea 
to a pure transparency," as one of the most eminent of them 
puts it. Dean Mansel is separated from Mr. Spencer by de- 
gree, not in kind. And now they are pushed by Evolution 



35© PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

into the abyss, and are solemnly assured that the reconcilia- 
tion of Religion and Science is effected by this religion of the 
Unknowable — this chimcEra bombinans in vacuo. Their 
Infinites and their Incomprehensibles, their Absolute and 
their Unconditioned, have brought them to this. It is only 
one step from the sublime to the unknowable. 

Practically, so far as it affects the lives of men and women 
in the battle of life, the Absolute and Unconditioned Godhead 
of learned divines is very much the same thing as the Absolute 
Unknowable. You may rout a logician by a "pure trans- 
parency," but you cannot check vice, crime, and war by it, 
nor train up men and women in holiness and truth. And the 
set of all modern theology is away from the anthropomorphic 
and into the Absolute. In trying to save a religion of the 
spirit- world, theologians are abandoning all religion of the real 
world ; they are turning religion into formulas and phrases, 
and are taking out of it all power over life, duty, and society. 

I say, in a word, unless religion is to be anthropomorphic, 
there can be no working religion at all. How strange is 
this new cry, sprung up in our own generation, that religion 
is dishonoured by being anthropomorphic ! Fetichism, 
Polytheism, Confucianism, Mediaeval Christianity, and Bible 
Puritanism have all been intensely anthropomorphic, and all 
owed their strength and dominion to that fact. You can have 
no religion without kinship, sympathy, relation of some hu- 
man kind between the believer, worshipper, servant, and the 
object of his belief, veneration, and service. The Neo- 
Theisms have all the same mortal weakness that the Un- 
knowable has. They offer no kinship, sympathy, or relation 
whatever between worshipper and worshipped. They too 
are logical formulas begotten in controversy, dwelling apart 
from man and the world. If the formula of the Unknowable 
is (x n ) or the Unknown raised to infinity, theirs is (nx), some 



THE GHOST OF RELIGION 35 1 

unknown expression of Infinity. Neither (x n ) nor (nx) will 
ever make good men and women. 

If we leave the region of formulas and go back to the 
practical effect of religion on human conduct, we must be 
driven to the conclusion that the future of religion is to be, 
not only what every real religion has ever been, anthropo- 
morphic — but frankly anthropic. The attempted religion 
of Spiritism has lost one after another every resource of a real 
religion, until risu solvuntur tabula, and it ends in a religion 
of Nothingism. It is the Nemesis of Faith in spiritual ab- 
stractions and figments. The hypothesis has burst, and leaves 
the Void. The future will have then to return to the Know- 
able and the certainly known, to the religion of Realism. It 
must give up explaining the Universe, and content itself with 
explaining human life. Humanity is the grandest object of 
reverence within the region of the real and the known, Hu- 
manity with the World on which it rests as its base and 
environment. Religion, having failed in the superhuman 
world, returns to the human world. Here religion can find 
again all its certainty, all its depth of human sympathy, all 
its claim to command and reward the purest self-sacrifice and 
love. We can take our place again with all the great religious 
spirits who have ever moulded the faith and life of men, and 
we find ourselves in harmony with the devout of every faith 
who are manfully battling with sin and discord. The way 
for us is the clearer as we find the religion of Spiritism, in 
its long and restless evolution of thirty centuries, ending in the 
legitimate deduction, the religion of the Unknowable, a para- 
dox as memorable as any in the history of the human mind. 
The alternative is very plain. Shall we cling to a religion of 
Spiritism when philosophy is whittling away spirit to Nothing? 
Or shall we accept a religion of Realism, where all the greal 
traditions and functions of religion are retained unbroken? 



XXII 

AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 

I 

Many years ago I warned Mr. Herbert Spencer that his 
Religion of the Unknowable was certain to lead him into 
strange company. "To invoke the Unknowable," I said, 
"is to re-open the whole range of Metaphysics; and the en- 
tire apparatus of Theology will follow through the breach. " 
I quoted Mr. G. Lewes' admirable remark/ "that the 
foundations of a Creed can rest only on the Known and the 
Knowable." We see the result. Mr. Spencer developed 
his Unknowable into an "Infinite and Eternal Energy, by 
which all things are created and sustained"; though he 
afterwards modified these highly theological words, "created 
and sustained." 

He discovered it to be the Ultimate Cause, the All-Being, 
the Creative Power, and all the other "alternative impossi- 
bilities of thought" which he once cast in the teeth of the 
older theologies. Naturally there is joy over one philosopher 
that repenteth. The Christian World claims this as equiva- 
lent to the assertion that God is the mind and spirit of the 
universe; and the Christian World says these words might 
have been used by Butler or Paley. 2 This is, indeed, very 
true; but it is strange to find the philosophy of one who 
makes it a point of conscience not to enter a church described 
as "the fitting and natural introduction to inspiration !" 

1 Problems of Life and Mind, vol. i. Preface. 

2 The Christian World, June 5 and July 3, 1884. 

352 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 353 

The admirers of Mr. Spencer's genius — and I count 
myself amongst the earliest — will not regret that he has been 
induced to lay aside his vast task of philosophic synthesis, in 
order more fully to explain his views about Religion. This 
is, indeed, for the thoughtful, as well as the practical, world 
the great question of our age, and the discussion that was 
started by his paper * and by mine 2 has opened many topics 
of general interest. Mr. Spencer has been led to give to 
some of his views a certainly new development, and he has 
treated of matters which he had not previously touched. 
Various critics have joined the debate. Sir James Stephen 3 
brought into play his Nasmyth hammer of Common Sense, 
and has asked the bold and truly characteristic question: 
"Can we not do just as well without any religion at all?" 
And then Mr. Wilfrid Ward, 4 "the rising hope of the stern 
and unbending" Papists, steps in to remind us of the ancient 
maxim — extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. 

1 cannot altogether agree with a friend who tells me that 
controversy is pure evil. It is not so when it leads to a closer 
sifting of important doctrines; when it is inspired with 
friendly feeling, and has no other object than to arrive at the 
truth. There were no mere "compliments" in my expres- 
sions of respect for Mr. Spencer and his work. I habitually 
speak of him as the only living Englishman who can fairly 
lay claim to the name of philosopher; nay, he is, I believe, 
the only man in Europe now living who has constructed a 
real system of philosophy. Very much in that philosophy 
I willingly adopt; as a philosophical theory I accept his idea 

1 II. Spencer, in Nineteenth Century, January and July, 1884. No. 83, 
vol. xv. 

2 F. Harrison, in Nineteenth Century, March 1884. No. 85, vol. xv. 

3 Sir J. Stephen, in Nineteenth Century, June 1884. 

4 W. Ward, in National Review, June 1884. 

2 A 



354 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

of the Unknowable. My rejection of it as the basis of Reli- 
gion is no new thing. The substance of my essay on the 
" Ghost of Religion" I have long ago taught at Newton Hall. 
The difference between Mr. Spencer and myself as to what 
religion means is vital and profound. So deep is it that it 
justifies me in returning to these questions, and still further 
disturbing his philosophic labour. But our long friendship 
I trust will survive the inevitable dispute. 

It will clear up much at issue between us if it be remem- 
bered that to me this question is one primarily of religion; 
to Mr. Spencer, one primarily of philosophy. He is dealing 
with transcendental conceptions, intelligible only to certain 
trained metaphysicians : I have been dealing with religion 
as it affects the lives of men and women in the world. Hence, 
if I admit with him that philosophy points to an unknow- 
able and inconceivable Reality behind phenomena, I insist 
that, to ordinary men and women, an unknowable and incon- 
ceivable Reality is practically an Unreality. The Everlast- 
ing Yes which the Evolutionist metaphysician is conscious of, 
but cannot conceive, is in effect on the public a mere Ever- 
lasting No; and a religion which begins and ends with the 
mystery of the Unknowable is not religion at all, but a mere 
logician's formula. This is how it comes about that Mr. 
Spencer complains that I have misunderstood him or have not 
read his books, that I fail to represent him, or even misrepre- 
sent him. I cannot admit that I have either misunderstood 
him or misrepresented him on any single point. I have 
studied his books part by part and chapter by chapter, and 
have examined the authorities on which he relies. 

He seems to think that all hesitation to accept his views 
will disappear if men will only turn to his First Principles, 
his Principles of Sociology, and his Descriptive Sociology, 
where he has "proved" this and " disproved" that, and 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 355 

arrayed the arguments and the evidence for every doctrine 
in turn. Now, for my part, I have studied all this, to my 
great pleasure and profit, since the first number of A Synthetic 
Philosophy appeared. Mr. Spencer objects to discipleship, 
or I would say that I am in very many things one of his dis- 
ciples myself. But in this matter of religion I hold still, as 
I have held from the first, that Mr. Spencer is mistaken as to 
the history, the nature, and the function of religion. It is 
quite true that he and I are at opposite poles in what relates 
to the work of religion on man and on life. In all he has 
written, he treats religion as mainly a thing of the mind, and 
concerned essentially with mystery. I say — and here I am 
on my own ground — that religion is mainly a thing of feel- 
ing and of conduct, and is concerned essentially with duty. 
I agree that religion has also an intellectual base; but here 
I insist that this intellectual basis must rest on something 
that can be known and conceived and at least partly under- 
stood ; and that it cannot be found at all in what is unknow- 
able, inconceivable, and in no way whatever to be under- 
stood. 

Now, in maintaining this, I have with me almost the whole 
of the competent minds which have dealt with this question. 
Mr. Spencer puts it rather as if it were merely fanaticism on 
my part which prevents me from accepting his theory of Reli- 
gion. Mr. Spencer must remember that in his Religion of 
the Unknowable he stands almost alone. He is, in fact, in- 
sisting to mankind, in a matter where all men have some 
opinion, on one of the most gigantic paradoxes in the history 
of thought. I know myself of no single thinker in Europe 
who has come forward to support this religion of an Unknow- 
able Cause, which cannot be presented in terms of conscious- 
ness, to which the words emotion, will, intelligence cannot 
be applied with any meaning, and yet which stands in the 



356 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

place of a supposed anthropomorphic Creator. Mr. George 
H. Lewes, who of all modern philosophers was the closest to 
Mr. Spencer, and of recent English philosophers the most 
nearly his equal, wrote ten years ago: — "Deeply as we may 
feel the mystery of the universe and the limitations of our 
faculties, the foundations of a creed can only rest on the Known 
and the Knowable." With that I believe every school of 
thought but a few dreamy mystics have agreed. Every 
religious teacher, movement, or body has equally started from 
that. For myself, I feel that I stand alongside of the religious 
spirits of every time and of every church in claiming for reli- 
gion some intelligible object of reverence, and the field of 
feeling and of conduct, as well as that of awe. Every notice 
of my criticism of Mr. Spencer which has fallen under my 
eye adopted my view of the hollowness of the Unknowable 
as a basis of Religion. So say Agnostics, Materialists, Scep- 
tics, Christians, Catholics, Theists, and Positivists. All 
with one consent disclaim making a Religion of the Unknow- 
able. Mr. Herbert Spencer may construct an Athanasian 
Creed of the "Inscrutable Existence" — which is neither 
God nor being — but he stands as yet Athanasius contra mun- 
dum. It is not, therefore, through the hardness of my heart 
and the stiffness of my neck that I cannot follow him here. 

Let us now sum up the various positions which Mr. 
Spencer would impose on us as to Religion. After his two 
articles and the recent discussion we can hardly mistake him, 
and they justify my saying that they form a gigantic paradox. 
Mr. Spencer maintains that : — 

i. The proper object of Religion is a Something which 
can never be known, or conceived, or understood ; to which 
we cannot apply the terms emotion, will, intelligence; of 
which we cannot affirm or deny that it is either person, or 
being, or mind, or matter, or indeed anything else. 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 357 

2. All that we can say of it is, that it is an Inscrutable 
Existence or an Unknowable Cause : we can neither know 
nor conceive what it is, nor how it came about, nor how it 
operates. It is, notwithstanding, the Ultimate Cause, the 
All-Being, the Creative Power. 

3. The essential business of Religion, so understood, is to 
keep alive the consciousness of a mystery that cannot be 
fathomed. 

4. We are not concerned with the question, "What effect 
this religion will have as a moral agent?" or, "Whether it 
will make good men and women?" Religion has to do with 
mystery, not with morals. 

These are the paradoxes to which my fanaticism refuses to 
assent. 

Now these were the views about Religion which I found in 
Mr. Spencer's first article, and they certainly are repeated 
in his second. He says: — "The Power which transcends 
phenomena cannot be brought within the forms of our finite 
thought." "The Ultimate Power is not representable in 
terms of human consciousness." "The attributes of per- 
sonality cannot be conceived by us as attributes of the Un- 
known Cause of things." "The nature of the Reality tran- 
scending appearances cannot be known, yet its existence is 
necessarily implied." "No conception of this Reality can be 
framed by us." "This Inscrutable Existence which Science, 
in the last resort, is compelled to recognise as unreached by its 
deepest analyses of matter, motion, thought, and feeling." 
" In ascribing to the Unknowable Cause of things such human 
attributes as emotion, will, intelligence, we arc using words 
which, when thus applied, have no corresponding ideas." 
There can be no kind of doubt about all this. I said Mr. 
Spencer proposes, as the object of religion, an abstraction 
which we cannot conceive, or present in thought, or regard 



358 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

as having personality, or as capable of feeling, purpose, or 
thought — in familiar words, I said it was "a sort of a some- 
thing, about which we can know nothing.' ' 

Mr. Spencer complains that I called this Something a ne- 
gation, an All-Nothingness, an (x n ), and an Everlasting No. 
He now says that this Something is the All-Being. The 
Unknowable is the Ultimate Reality — the sole existence ; — 
the entire Cosmos, as we are conscious of it, being a mere 
show. In familiar words: — Everything is nought, and the 
Unknowable is the only real Thing. I quite agree that this is 
Mr. Spencer's position as a metaphysician. It is not at all 
new to me, for it is worked out in his First Principles most dis- 
tinctly. Ten years ago, when I reviewed Mr. Lewes' Prob- 
lems of Life and Mind, I criticised Mr. Spencer's Trans- 
figured Realism as being too absolute. I then stated my 
own philosophical position to be that, "our scientific concep- 
tions within have a good working correspondence with an 
(assumed) reality without — we having no means of knowing 
whether the absolute correspondence between them be great 
or small, or whether there be any absolute correspondence at 
all." To that I adhere ; and, whilst I accept the doctrine of 
an Unknown substratum, I cannot assent to the doctrine 
that the Unknowable is the Absolute Reality. But I am quite 
aware that he holds it, nor have I ever said that he did not. 
On the contrary, I granted that it might be the first axiom 
of science or the universal postulate of philosophy. But it 
is not a religion. 1 

I said then, and I say still, speaking with regard to religion, 
and from the religious point of view, that the Metaphysician's 

1 My words were that, "although the Unknowable is logically said to be 
Something, yet the something of which we neither know nor conceive any- 
thing is practically nothing." That is, speaking from the point of view of 
religion. 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 359 

Unknowable is tantamount to a Nothing. The philosopher 
may choose to say that there is an Ultimate Reality which 
we cannot conceive, or know, or liken to anything we do 
know. But these subtleties of speculation are utterly unin- 
telligible to the ordinary public. And to tell them that they 
are to worship this Unknowable is equivalent to telling them 
to worship nothing. I quite agree that Mr. Spencer, or any 
metaphysician, is entitled to assert that the Unknowable is 
the sole Reality. But religion is not a matter for Metaphysi- 
cians — but for men, women, and children. And to them the 
Unknowable is Nothing. Sir James Stephen calls the dis- 
tinctions of Mr. Spencer "an unmeaning play of words." 
I do not say that they are unmeaning to the philosophers 
working on metaphysics. But to the public, seeking for a 
religion, the Reality or the Unreality of the Unknowable is 
certainly an unmeaning play of words. 

Even supposing that Evolution ever could bring the people 
to comprehend the subtlety of the All-Being, of which all 
things we know are only shows, the Unknowable is still in- 
capable of supplying the very elements of Religion. Mr. 
Spencer thinks otherwise. He says, that although we cannot 
know, or conceive it, or apply to it any of the terms of life, or 
of consciousness, "it leaves unchanged certain of the senti- 
ments comprehended under the name religion." "What- 
ever components of the religious sentiment disappear, there 
must ever survive those which are appropriate to the con- 
sciousness of a Mystery ! " Certain of the religious sentiments 
are left unchanged ! The consciousness of a Mystery is to 
survive! Is that all? "I am not concerned," says he, "to 
show what effect this religious sentiment will have as a moral 
agent!" A religion without anything to be known, with 
nothing to teach, with no defined moral power, with some 
ragr. of religious sentiment surviving, mainly the conscious- 



360 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

ness of Mystery — this is, indeed, the mockery of Religion. 

Forced, as it seems, to clothe the nakedness of the Unknow- 
able with some shreds of sentiment, Mr. Spencer has given it 
a positive character, which for every step that it advances 
towards Religion recedes from sound Philosophy. The 
Unknowable was at first spoken of almost as if it were an 
unthinkable abstraction, and so undoubtedly it is. But it 
finally emerges as the Ultimate Reality, the Ultimate Cause, 
the All-Being, the Absolute Power, the Unknown Cause, 
the Inscrutable Existence, the Infinite and Eternal Energy, 
from which all things proceed, the Creative Power, "the 
Infinite and Eternal Energy, by which all things are created 
and sustained." It is "to stand in substantially the same 
relation towards our general conception of things as does 
the Creative Power asserted by Theology." "It stands 
towards the Universe, and towards ourselves, in the same 
relation as an anthropomorphic Creator was supposed to 
stand, bears a like relation with it, not only to human thought 
but to human feeling." In other words, the Unknowable 
is the Creator ; subject to this, that we cannot assert or deny 
that he, she, or it, is Person, or Being, or can feel, think, or 
act, or do anything else that we can either know or imagine, or 
is such that we can ascribe to Him, Her, or It anything what- 
ever within the realm of consciousness. 

Now the Unknowable, so qualified and explained, offends 
against all the canons of criticism, so admirably set forth 
in First Principles, and especially those of Dean Mansel, 
therein quoted and adopted. The Unknowable is not un- 
knowable if we know that "it creates and sustains all things." 
One need not repeat all the metaphysical objections arrayed 
by Mr. Spencer himself against connecting the ideas of the 
Absolute, the Infinite, First Cause, and Creator with that of 
any one Power. How can Absolute Power create? How 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 36 1 

can the Absolute be a Cause? The Absolute excludes the 
relative ; and Creation and Cause both imply relation. How 
can the Infinite be a Cause, or create ? For if there be effect 
distinct from cause, or if there be something uncreated, the 
Infinite would be thereby limited. What is the meaning of 
All-Being? Does it include, or not, its own manifestation? 
If the Cosmos is a mere show of an Unknown Cause, then 
the Unknown Cause is not Infinite, for it does not include 
the Cosmos ; and not Absolute, for the Universe is its mani- 
festation, and all things proceed from it. That is to say, 
the Absolute is in relation to the Universe, as Cause and 
Effect. 

Again, if the "very notions, beginning and end, cause and 
purpose, relative notions belonging to human thought, are 
probably irrelevant to the Ultimate Reality transcending 
human thought," as he truly tells us, how can we speak of 
the Ultimate Cause, or indeed of Infinite and Eternal? The 
philosophical difficulties of imagining a First Cause, so ad- 
mirably put by Mr. Spencer years ago, are not greater than 
those of imagining an Ultimate Cause. The objections he 
states to the idea of Creation are not removed by talking of a 
Creative Power rather than a Creator God. If Mr. Spencer's 
new Creative Power "stands towards our general conception 
of things in substantially the same relation as the Creative 
Power of Theology," it is open to all the metaphysical 
dilemmas so admirably stated in First Principles. Mr. 
Spencer cannot have it both ways. If his Unknowable be 
the Creative Power and Ultimate Cause, it simply renews all 
the mystification of the old theologies. If his Unknowable 
be unknowable, then it is idle to talk of Infinite and Eternal 
Energy, sole Reality, All-Being, and Creative Power. This 
is the slip-slop of theologians which Mr. Spencer, as much 
as any man living, has finally torn to shreds. 



362 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

In what way does the notion of Ultimate Cause avoid the 
difficulties in the way of First Cause, and how is Creative 
Power an idea more logical than Creator? And if, as Mr. 
Spencer says (First Principles, p. 35), "the three different 
suppositions respecting the origin of things turn out to be 
literally unthinkable," what does he mean by asserting that 
a Creative Power is the one great Reality? Mr. Spencer 
seems to suggest that, though all idea of First Cause, of 
Creator, of Absolute Existence is unthinkable, the difficulty 
in the way of predicating them of anything is got over by 
asserting that the unthinkable and the unknowable is the 
ultimate reality. He tells that, though we cannot conceive 
the Unknowable, we are conscious of it. He said (First 
Principles, p. no), "every supposition respecting the genesis 
of the Universe commits us to alternative impossibilities of 
thought"; and again, "we are not permitted to know — 
nay, we are not even permitted to conceive — that Reality 
which is behind the veil of Appearance." 

Quite so ! On that ground we have long rested firmly, 
accepting Mr. Spencer's teaching. It is to violate that rule 
if we now go on to call it Creative Power, Ultimate Cause, 
and the rest. It comes then to this: Mr. Spencer says to 
the theologians, "I cannot allow you to speak of a First 
Cause, or a Creator, or an All-Being, or an Absolute Exist- 
ence, because you mean something intelligible and conceiv- 
able by these terms, and I tell you that they stand for ideas 
that are unthinkable and inconceivable. But," he adds, "I 
have a perfect right to talk of an Ultimate Cause and a 
Creative Power, and an Absolute Existence, and an All- 
Being, because I mean nothing by these terms — at least, 
nothing that can be either thought of or conceived of, and I 
know that I am not talking of anything intelligible or con- 
ceivable. All the same we are conscious of there being some- 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 363 

thing. That is the faith of an Agnostic, which except a man 
believe faithfully he cannot be sound." 

Beyond the region of the knowable and the conceivable 
we have no right to assume an infinite energy more than an 
infinite series of energies, or an infinite series of infinite 
things or nothings. We have no right to assume one Ulti- 
mate Cause, or any cause, more than an infinite series of 
Causes, or something which is not Cause at all. We have 
no right to assume that anything beyond the knowable is 
eternal or infinite, or anything else ; we have no right to 
assume that it is the Ultimate Reality. There may be an 
endless circle of Realities, or there may be no Reality at all. 
Once leave the region of the knowable and the conceivable, 
and every positive assertion is unwarranted. The forms of 
our consciousness prove to us, says Mr. Spencer, that what 
lies behind the region of consciousness is not merely unknown 
but unknowable, that it is one, and that it is Real. The laws 
of mind, I reply, do not hold good in the region of the un- 
thinkable ; the forms of our consciousness cannot limit the 
Unknowable. All positive assertions about that "which can- 
not be brought within the forms of our finite thought" are 
therefore unphilosophical. We have always held this of the 
theological Creation, and we must hold it equally of the 
evolutionist Creation. Here is the difference between Posi- 
tive Philosophy and Agnostic Metaphysics. 

But if this Realism of the Unknowable offends against 
sound philosophy, the Worship of the Unknowable is abhor- 
rent to every instinct of genuine Religion. There is some- 
thing startling in Mr. Spencer's assertion that he "is not 
concerned to show what effect this religious sentiment will 
have as a moral agent." As in First Principles, so now, he 
represents the business of Religion to be to keep alive the 
consciousness of a Mystery. The recognition of this supreme 



364 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

verity has been from the first, he says, the vital element of 
Religion. From the beginning it has dimly discerned this 
ultimate verity; and that supreme and ultimate verity is, 
that there is an inscrutable Mystery. If this be not retro- 
gressive Religion, what is? Religion is not indeed to be 
discarded ; but, in its final and perfect form, all that it ever 
has had of reverence, gratitude, love, and sympathy is to be 
shrivelled up into the recognition of a Mystery. Morality, 
duty, goodness are no longer to be within its sphere. It will 
neither touch the heart of men nor mould the conduct; it 
will perpetually remind the intelligence that there is a great 
^Enigma, which, it tells us, can never be solved. Not only is 
religion reduced to a purely mental sphere, but its task in 
that sphere is one practically imbecile. 

Mr. Spencer complains that I called his Unknowable "an 
ever-present conundrum to be everlastingly given up." But 
he uses words almost exactly the same ; he himself speaks of 
"the Great Enigma which he (man) knows cannot be solved." 
The business of the religious sentiment is with "a conscious- 
ness of a Mystery that cannot be fathomed." It would be 
difficult to find for Religion a lower and more idle part to 
play in human life than that of continually presenting to 
man a conundrum, which he is told he must continually give 
up. One would take all this to be a bit from Alice in Wonder- 
land rather than the first chapter of Synthetic Philosophy. 

I turn to some of the points on which Mr. Spencer thinks 
that I misunderstand or misrepresent his meaning. I cannot 
admit any one of these cases. In calling the Unknowable a 
pure negation, I spoke from the standpoint of Religion, not 
of Metaphysics. It may be a logical postulate, but that of 
which we can know nothing, and of which we can form no 
conception, I shall continue to call a pure negation, as an 
object of worship, even if I am told (as I now am) that it is 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 365 

that "by which all things are created and sustained," or 
"that from which all things proceed." Such is the view of 
Sir James Stephen, and of every other critic who has joined 
in this discussion. 

With respect to Dean Mansel I made no mistake; the 
mistake is Mr. Spencer's — not mine. I said that of all 
modern theologians the Dean came the nearest to him. As 
we all know, in First Principles Mr. Spencer quotes and 
adopts four pages from Mansel's Bampton Lectures. But I 
said "there is a gulf which separates even his all-negative 
deity from Mr. Spencer's impersonal, unconscious, unthink- 
ing, and unthinkable Energy." Mr. Spencer says that I 
misrepresent him and transpose his doctrine and Mansel's, 
because he regards the Absolute as positive and the Dean 
regarded it as negative. If Mr. Spencer will look at my 
words again, he will see that I was speaking of Mansel's 
Theology, not of his Ontology. I said "deity" not the 
Absolute. Mansel, as a metaphysician, no doubt spoke of 
the Absolute as negative, whilst Mr. Spencer speaks of it as 
positive. But Mansel's idea of deity is personal, whilst Mr. 
Spencer's Energy is not personal. That is strictly accurate. 
Dean Mansel's words are, "it is our duty to think of God as 
personal"; Mr. Spencer's words are, "duty requires us 
neither to affirm nor deny personality" of the Unknown 
Cause. That is to say, the Dean called his First Cause 
God ; Mr. Spencer prefers to call it Energy. Both describe 
this First Cause negatively; but whilst the Dean calls it a 
Person, Mr. Spencer will not say that it is person, conscious, 
or thinking. Mr. Spencer's impression then that I mis- 
represented him in this matter is simply his own rather hasty 
reading of my words. 

It is quite legitimate in a question of religion and an object 
of worship to speak of this Unknowable Energy, described 



366 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

as Mr. Spencer describes it, as impersonal, unconscious, un- 
thinking, and unthinkable. The distinction that, since we 
neither affirm nor deny of it personality, consciousness, or 
thought, it is not therefore impersonal, is a metaphysical 
subtlety. That which cannot be presented in terms of 
human consciousness is neither personal, conscious, nor 
thinking, but properly unthinkable. To the ordinary mind 
it is a logical formula, it is apart from man, it is impersonal 
and unconscious. And to tell us that this conundrum is 
"the power which manifests itself in consciousness," that 
man and the world are but its products and manifestations, 
that it may have (for aught we know) something higher than 
personality and something grander than intelligence, is to 
talk theologico-metaphysical jargon, but is not to give the 
average man and woman any positive idea at all, and cer- 
tainly not a religious idea. In religion, at any rate, that 
which can only be described by negations is negative; that 
which cannot be presented in terms of consciousness is 
unconscious. 

I shall say but little about Mr. Spencer's Ghost theory as 
the historical source of all religion; because it is, after all, 
a subordinate matter, and would lead to a wide digression. 
I am sorry that he will not accept my (not very serious) 
invitation to him to modify the paradoxes thereon to be read 
in his Principles of Sociology. I have always held it to be 
one of the most unlucky of all his sociologic doctrines, and 
that on psychological as well as on historical grounds. Mr. 
Spencer asserts that all forms of religious sentiment spring 
from the primitive idea of a disembodied double of a dead 
man. I assert that this is a rather complicated and de- 
veloped form of thought ; and that the simplest and earliest 
form of religious sentiment is the idea of the rudest savage, 
that visible objects around him — animal, vegetable, and 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 367 

inorganic — have quasi-human feelings and powers, which 
he regards with gratitude and awe. Mr. Spencer says that 
man only began to worship a river or a volcano when he 
began to imagine them as the abode of dead men's spirits. 
I say that he began to fear or adore them, so soon as he 
thought the river or the volcano had the feelings and the 
powers of active beings; and that was from the dawn of 
the human intelligence. The latter view is, I maintain, far 
the simpler and more obvious explanation ; and it is a fault 
in logic to construct a complicated explanation when a simple 
one answers the facts. Animals think inert things of a 
peculiar form to be animal, or, at least, to have active proper- 
ties ; so do infants. The dog barks at a shadow ; the horse 
dreads a steam-engine; the baby loves her doll, feeds her, 
nurses her, and buries her. The savage thinks the river, or 
the mountain beside which he lives, the most beneficent, 
awful, powerful of beings. There is the germ of religion. 
To assure us that the savage has no feeling of awe and affec- 
tion for the river and the mountain, until he has evolved the 
elaborate idea of disembodied spirits of dead men dwelling 
invisibly inside them, is as idle as it would be to assure us 
that the love and the terror of the dog, the horse, and the 
baby are due to their perceiving some disembodied spirit 
inside the shadow, the steam-engine, or the doll. 

I think it a little hard that I may not hold this common- 
sense view of the matter, along with almost all who have 
studied the question, without being told that it comes of 
"persistent thinking along defined grooves," and thai I 
should accept the Ghosl theory of Religion were it not for 
my fanatical discipleship. Does not Mr. Spencer himself 
persistently think along defined grooves; and does not every 
Systematic thinker do the same? And it so happens 1 hat the 
Ghost theory leads to conclusions that outrage common 



368 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

sense. But it is certain that the believers in the Ghost 
theory as the origin of all forms of Religion are few and far 
between. The difficulties in the way of it are enormous. 
Mr. Spencer laboriously tries to persuade us that the wor- 
ship of the Sun and the Moon arose, not from man's natural 
reverence for these great and beautiful powers of Nature, 
but solely as they were thought to be the abodes of the dis- 
embodied spirits of dead ancestors. Animal-worship, tree- 
and plant-worship, fetichism, the Confucian worship of 
heaven, all, he would have us believe, take their origin 
entirely from the idea that these objects contain the spirits 
of the dead. If this is not "persistent thinking along de- 
fined grooves," I know not what it is. 

The case of China is decisive. There we have a religion 
of vast antiquity and extent, perfectly clear and well ascer- 
tained. It rests entirely on worship of Heaven, and Earth, 
and objects of Nature, regarded as organised beings, and not 
as the abode of human spirits. There is in the religion and 
philosophy of China no notion of human spirits, disembodied 
and detached from the dead person, conceived as living in 
objects and distinct from dead bodies. The dead are the 
dead; not the spiritual denizens of other things. In the 
face of this, the vague language of missionaries and travellers 
as to the beliefs of savages must be treated with caution. 

Fetichism, says Mr. Spencer, is not found in the lowest 
races. Be that as it may, it is found wherever we can trace 
the germs of religion. I read in the Descriptive Sociology 
that Mr. Burton, perhaps the most capable of all African 
travellers, declares that "fetichism is still the only faith 
known in East Africa." In other places, we read of the 
sun and moon, forests, trees, stones, snakes, and the like 
regarded with religious reverence by the savages of Central 
Africa. "The Damaras attribute the origin of the sheep to 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 369 

a large stone." They regard a big tree as the origin of 
Damaras. " Cattle of a certain colour are venerated by the 
Damaras." "To the Bechuanas rain appears as the giver 
of all good." "The negro whips or throws away a worth- 
less fetich." "The Hottentots and Bushmen shoot poisoned 
arrows at the lightning and throw old shoes at it." Exactly ! 
And do these Damaras, Bechuanas, and Bushmen do this 
solely because they think that the sun and moon, the light- 
ning, the rain, the trees, the cattle, and the snakes are the 
abodes of the disembodied spirits of their dead relatives? 
And do they never do this until they have evolved a developed 
Ghost theory? 

This is more than I can accept, for all the robustness of 
faith which Mr. Spencer attributes to me. Whilst I find in 
a hundred books that countless races of Africa and the 
organised religion of China attribute human qualities to 
natural objects, and grow up to regard those objects with 
veneration and awe, I shall continue to think that fetichism, 
or the reverent ascription of feeling and power to natural 
objects, is a spontaneous tendency of the human mind. And 
I shall refuse, even on Mr. Spencer's high authority, to 
believe that it is solely a result of a developed Ghost theory. 
To ask us to believe this as "proved" on the strength of a 
pile of clippings from books of travel is, I think, quite as 
droll to ordinary minds as anything Mr. Spencer can pick 
up out of the Positivist Calendar. 



IT 



I pass now to consider the fifteen pages of Mr. Spencer's 
article in which be attacks the writings of AugUSte Comte. 
And I begin by pointing out that this was not at all the 

issue between us, so that this attack savours of the device 

2B 



370 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

known to lawyers as "prejudice," or " abusing the plaintiff's 
attorney." I gave reasons for thinking that the Unknow- 
able could never be the foundation of a Creed. I added, in 
some twenty lines at most, that Humanity could be. Through- 
out my article I did not refer to Comte. My argument was 
entirely independent of any religious ordinances whatever, 
whether laid down by Comte or any one else. Mr. Mill, 
in his work on Comte, has emphatically asserted that Hu- 
manity is an idea pre-eminently fitted to be the object of 
religion. And very many powerful minds agree with Mr. 
Mill so far, though they do not accept the organised form of 
that religion as Auguste Comte conceived it. To what de- 
gree, and in what sense, I myself accept it is not doubtful; 
for I have striven for years past to make it known in my 
public utterances. But, until I put forward Auguste Comte 
as an infallible authority, until I preach or practise every- 
thing laid down in the Positive Polity, it is hardly an answer 
to me in a philosophical discussion to jest for the fiftieth 
time about Comte 's arrogance, or about the banners to be 
used in the solemn processions, or about addressing prayers 
to "holy" Humanity. My friends and I address no prayers 
to Humanity as "holy" or otherwise; we use no banners, 
and we never speak of Comte as Mahometans speak of 
Mahomet, or as Buddhists speak of Buddha. For my own 
part, I am continually saying, and I say it deliberately now, 
that I look upon very much that Comte threw out for the 
future as tentative and purely Utopian. Since I have held 
this language for many years in public, I do not think that 
Mr. Spencer is justified in describing me as a blind devotee. 
And when he parries a criticism of his own philosophy, by 
ridiculing practices and opinions for which I have never 
made myself responsible, I hardly think he is acting with 
the candid mind which befits the philosopher in all things. 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 371 

For this reason I shall not trouble myself about the " eccen- 
tricities" which he thinks he can discover in the writings of 
Comte. A thousand eccentricities in Comte would not 
make it reasonable in Spencer to worship the Unknowable; 
and it would be hard indeed to match the eccentricity of 
venerating as the sole Reality that of which we only know 
that we can know nothing and imagine nothing. But there 
are other good reasons for declining to discuss with Mr. 
Spencer the writings of Comte. The first is that he knows 
nothing whatever about them. To Mr. Spencer the writings 
of Comte are, if not the Absolute Unknowable, at any rate 
the Absolute Unknown. I have long endeavoured to per- 
suade Mr. Spencer to study Comte, all the more as he owes 
to him so much indirectly through others. But, so far as I 
know, I have not induced him to do so. And his recent 
criticisms of these writings show the same thing. They add 
nothing, I may say, to the criticism contained in the work 
of Mr. Mill. To turn over the pages of the Positive Polity 
and find many things which seem paradoxical is an exercise 
easy enough ; but to grasp the conceptions of Comte, or in- 
deed of any philosopher, seriously, is labour of a different 
kind. 

Nothing is easier than to make cheap ridicule of any 
philosopher whatever. The philosopher necessarily works 
in a region of high abstraction, and largely employs the 
resources of deduction. He is bound by his office to deal 
freely with wide generalisations; and to follow his principles 
across all apparent obstacles. Every philosopher accord- 
ingly falls from time to time into astounding paradoxes; he 
is always accused by the superficial of arrogance ; by the 
wits of absurdity; by the public of blindness. It is the 
fate- of philosophers; and the charges, it must be allowed, 
are often founded in reason. Descartes, Hobbes, Leibnitz. 



372 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Hegel, may in turn be attacked for certain hypotheses of 
theirs as the most arrogant of men and the wildest of sophists. 
How often has Mr. Spencer shared the same fate ! There 
are those who think that no other living man has ever ven- 
tured on assertions at once so dogmatic and so paradoxical. 
I have too much respect for Mr. Spencer to quote any one 
of these wonderful bits of philosophic daring. I recognise in 
him a real philosopher of a certain order, and I seek to 
understand his system as a whole; nor am I dismayed in 
my studies by a thousand things in his theories, which cer- 
tainly do seem to me very hard sayings. Mr. Spencer has 
himself just published a very remarkable work, "The Man 
versus the State"; to which he hardly expects to make a 
convert except here and there, and about which an un- 
friendly critic might say that it might be entitled "Mr. 
Spencer against All England." I shall not certainly criticise 
him for that. But it is a signal instance of the isolated posi- 
tion assumed from time to time by philosophers. Philoso- 
phers, who live, not so much in "glass houses" as in very 
crystal palaces of their own imagination, of all people, one 
would think, should give up the pastime of throwing stones 
at their neighbour's constructions. 

I give an instance of the way in which Mr. Spencer mis- 
understands Comte. Mr. Spencer speaks of Comte's His- 
torical Calendar as a "canonisation," as a list of "saints," 
to be "worshipped" day by day, as a means of "regulating 
posterity," and as part of the "deification" of Humanity. 
And he further represents this list of historical names as 
a strictly classified selection of men in degree of personal 
merit. Now every part of this view is an error. So far from 
this calendar being permanently imposed on posterity, Comte 
himself speaks of it as provisional, to serve a temporary pur- 
pose, and merely for the nineteenth century. And what is 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 373 

that purpose? Why, to impress on the mind the general 
course of human civilisation. Comte calls it "a concrete 
view of man's history." It is not meant to be a classification 
in real order of merit. It is not essentially personal at all. 
The names are given and always spoken of as "types," con- 
crete embodiments of manifold elements in the civilisation of 
the past. Over and over again Comte says that the type 
and its place are often chosen without reference to personal 
merit to represent a class, a nation, or a movement. 

They are not called, or treated of, as " saints." There is 
no " canonisation," no " worship," no ascription of perfec- 
tion, or absolute merit of any kind. The whole scheme 
from beginning to end is, what Comte calls it, a concrete 
view of man's history, a mode of impressing on the minds 
of modern men what they owe in so many ways to men in 
the past. The exigencies of a calendar, with its months, 
weeks, and days, preclude any real classification of merit; 
nor is any such thing attempted. It is a mode of teaching 
history, using the artifice of associating the names of certain 
famous men with months, weeks, and days. And the object 
is to impress on the mind the multiplicity of the forces and 
elements which make up civilisation. To suppose that all 
names which occupy similar places represent men of exactly 
equal merit is a gratuitous piece of absurdity introduced 
into a fine conception. Even in the Church Calendar there 
is St. Paul's Day and St. Swithin's Day, though no one sup- 
poses that St. Svvithin is regarded as the equal of St. Paul. 
But Comte's Historical Calendar has no analogy with the 
Catholic Calendar at all. It is a concrete view of history, 
intended to commemorate the sum of human civilisation. 

A single example may show with how little care Mr. 
Spencer has looked at Comte. lie complains that Comte 
should put Bichat above Newton, because he finds that 



374 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Bichat heads a month in the Calendar, and Newton a week. 
Now, Comte never instituted any personal comparison be- 
tween Newton and Bichat. But he explained that for the 
last month, which represents the course of modern science, 
he must choose a biologist and not a mathematician, on the 
ground of the superior importance of Biology. The Calen- 
dar was constructed more than thirty years ago, when cer- 
tainly a thoroughly adequate type of Biology was not quite 
accessible. For grounds fully explained, he chose Bichat. 
Newton takes his place with the mathematicians; but any 
idea that Bichat's intellect was superior to Newton's has not 
the smallest authority in anything said by Comte. 

I shall certainly not enter into any defence of this Calen- 
dar. It seems to me the best synthetic scheme of history 
which has ever been constructed on a single page. But I 
am far from supposing it perfect, nor do I doubt that it 
might easily be amended or revised. Mr. Spencer seems 
astounded that Cyrus and Godfrey, Terence and Juvenal, 
Froissart and Palissy, should hold in it the places they do. 
To discuss that question would involve a long historical 
argument, and I am not at all disposed to enter into any 
historical argument with Mr. Spencer. With all his scien- 
tific learning and manifold gifts, Mr. Spencer is seldom 
regarded as having much to tell us within the historical 
field. It is here that his inferiority to Comte is most strik- 
ingly seen. Those who know the harmonious power with 
which Comte has called forth into life the vast procession 
of the ages can best judge how weak by his side Mr. Spencer 
appears. In Mr. Spencer's theory of history the past teaches 
little but a few Quaker-like maxims; that it is very like a 
savage to fight, and that military activity and superstition 
are the sources of all evil. Certainly Comte, as heartily as 
Spencer, has condemned the military spirit in this age, and 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 375 

the continuance of all fictitious beliefs. But he is not so 
blind to facts that he does not recognise the historical uses 
of the military life in the past, and the beauty of many theo- 
logical types. And thus it is that he honours Godfrey the 
Crusader, as well as Socrates the philosopher; the con- 
querors Cyrus and Sesostris, as well as Penn the Quaker and 
St. Paul the Apostle. 

There is a certain " fallacy of the Den" running through 
Mr. Spencer's historical notions, of which his article gives 
very striking examples. Possessed by his theory of indefi- 
nite "differentiation," the course of civilisation presents itself 
to his mind as a perpetual development of new forces — pro- 
gression in a constant series of divergent lines. According 
to this view of history, an institution, an idea, an energy 
which the civilisation of to-day has abandoned is finally 
condemned ; to revive it, even under new forms, is retro- 
gression. Since savages respected their ancestors, it would 
be savage to respect our ancestors. Since we have been 
tending, during the last two or three centuries, to lessen all 
temporal and spiritual influence on the individual, we must 
go on till we have reduced both to zero. Since war is in- 
human, the qualities and habits which the military life pro- 
moted are equally abominable. To revive anything which 
modern society has discarded is retrogression. For the test 
with Mr. Spencer is not whether it is relatively good or bad 
for man, but is found in the fact of Evolution absolutely. 

Now this error affects all that Mr. Spencer says about the 
history of civilisation. The truth is, as Comtc has so won- 
derfully shown, the story of man's development is a tale of 
continual revival, reconstruction, and fresh adjustments of 
social life. Old habits, thoughts, and energies spring into 
new life, under altered forms, and in new co-ordination. 
Development means not indefinite differentiation, but con- 



376 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

tinuous growth, with organic readjustment of the organism 
to its environment. And that organic readjustment is con- 
stantly demanding the renewal of dormant elements, and the 
new uses of old things. I should be sorry to think that 
Humanity were for ever condemned to lose everything which 
the taste of this somewhat cynical, material, and democratic 
generation is pleased to throw off. The phrase Retrogres- 
sive Religion does not frighten me at all. Any religion that 
the Future of Man is to have will be retrogressive in this 
sense; that it will revive something of religious feelings 
which were once more active in the world than they happen 
to be to-day. Whether an enthusiastic regard for the wel- 
fare of our human race be retrogressive religion or not I 
care little. I should have thought it to be a new and a 
progressive type of creed, more so than the worship of the 
Ultimate Cause, and the Creative Power, and the All-Being ; 
where I find, indeed (and where the Christian World finds 
also), retrogression into Metaphysic and Theology. 

Ill 

I turn now to the question — if Humanity be an adequate 
object of religion ? — a question, as I say, independent of 
the forms in which Comte proposed to constitute it. Mr. 
Mill, with all his hostility to Positivism, asserted emphatically 
that it was; and he went so far as to say that every other 
type of religion would be the better, in so far as it approached 
the religion of Humanity. And first let us note that Mr. 
Spencer has given a quite exaggerated sense to what we 
mean by Religion and Humanity by attaching to these ideas 
theological associations. The same thing is done by Sir 
James Stephen, and by all our theological critics. Mr. 
Spencer asks, What are the claims of Humanity to "God- 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 377 

hood"? Sir James Stephen talks of "the shadow of a 
God," and he says he would as soon "worship" the ugliest 
idol in India as the human race. All this is to foist in theo- 
logical ideas where none are suggested by us. Humanity is 
neither the shadow of God nor the substitute for God, nor 
has it any analogy with God. No one claims any "god- 
hood" for humanity or any perfection of any kind. We do 
not ask any one to "worship" it, as Hindoos worship idols, 
or as Christians worship God or the Virgin. If it misleads 
people, I am quite willing to spell humanity with a small 
"h, " or not to use the word at all. I am quite content to 
speak of the human race, if that makes things clearer; I 
am ready to give up the word "worship," if that is a stum- 
bling-block, and to speak of showing affection and reverence. 
If people mean by religion going down on their knees and 
invoking a supernatural being, I will wait till the word 
"religion" has lost these associations. 

The very purpose of the Positive Scheme is to satisfy 
rational people that, though the ecstatic " worship" of su- 
pernatural divinities has come to an end, intelligent love and 
respect for our human brotherhood will help us to do our 
duty in life. So stated, the proposition is almost a truism; 
it is undoubtedly the practical conviction of millions of good 
people, and, as it seems, is that of Sir James Stephen. In 
plain words, the Religion of Humanity means recognising 
your duty to your fellowman on human grounds. This is 
the sum and substance of that which it pleases some critics 
and some philosophers to represent as a grotesque delusion. 
Whatever is grotesque in the idea is derived from the ex- 
travagance with which they themselves distort that idea. I 
have no wish to "worship" Humanity in any other sense 
than as a man may worship his own father and mother. A 
good man feels affection and reverence for his father and his 






378 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

mother ; he can cultivate that feeling and make it the spring 
of conduct. And the feeling is not destroyed by his finding 
that his father and mother had the failings of men and 
women. Something of the affection, and more of the sense 
of brotherhood, which a man feels towards his own parents, 
he feels towards his family; not a little of it even to his 
home, his city, or his province, and much of it towards his 
country. Every good and active man recognises the tie 
that binds him to a widening series of groups of his kinsmen 
and fellowmen. In that feeling there are elements of re- 
spect, elements of affection, and elements of devotion, in 
certain degrees. That sense of respect, affection, and devo- 
tion can be extended wider than country. It can be extended, 
I say, as far as the human race itself. And since patriotism 
does not stop with our actual contemporaries, but extends to 
the memories and the future of our countrymen, so, I main- 
tain, our feeling for the human race must include what it 
has been, as well as what it is to be. That is all that I mean 
by the religion of humanity. What is there of "grotesque," 
of the ugliest of Hindoo idols, and all the rest of it, in so 
commonplace an opinion? 

All good and even all decent men about us daily order 
their lives under a more or less effective sense of their social 
duties. They live more or less for their wives, their chil- 
dren, their parents, their family. I do not deny that they 
live largely for themselves also; but with good men and 
good women the two strands of motive are beautifully bound 
in one. And the better the man, the more close is the har- 
mony between his social and his personal life. Outside 
their family, men have other strong ties of duty and of regard 
for definite social groups. They will do much for their 
friends, their party, their profession, their church, their 
academy, their class, their city, their country. It is dis- 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 379 

graceful to proclaim oneself indifferent to these claims : to 
refuse to make any sacrifice for them, to deny that we owe 
them anything, or that we feel any regard for them. There 
is nothing very heroic about all this in the average ; and it is 
always more or less mixed up with personal motives. But 
in the main it is good and wholesome, and bears noble wit- 
ness to the marvellous social nature of man. Now I do not 
say that this in itself is religion. But I mean by religion this 
sense of social duty, pushed to its full extent, strengthened 
by a sound view of human nature, and warmed by the glow 
of imagination and sympathy. It has been said in a vague 
way that religion is " morality touched by emotion." The 
religion of Humanity, as I conceive it, is simply morality 
fused with social devotion, and enlightened by sound philosophy. 
Yet men who are known to live under a practical sense of 
their social duties, men who would be ashamed to profess 
total unconcern for father, mother, wife and child, friends 
and fellow-citizens, are not ashamed to exhaust the terms of 
opprobrium for the collective notion of humanity; which 
after all is only made up of a multitude of fathers, mothers, 
wives, children, friends, fellow-citizens, and fellowmen. Mr. 
Spencer's whole life (as his friends know even better than the 
world) has been one of unfaltering devotion to his great 
mistress Philosophy, worthy to compare with any in the 
roll of the "lovers of wisdom." Sir James Stephen is no 
less widely known, not only for his indefatigable public ser- 
vices, but for his hearty private character : a devoted public 
servant, who, it is said, sentences even the worst criminal 
"gently, as if he loved him," under a strong sense of public 
duty. Yet these eminent men, whose entire lives are filled 
with social, rather than personal, energy, have no words 
strong enough (for controversial purposes) to express their 
contempt for the human race. Mankind, says Mr. Spencer, 



380 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

is "a bubble," "a dull leaden-hued thing." Sir James 
Stephen says it is "a stupid, ignorant, half -beast of a crea- 
ture"; and he would as soon worship the ugliest Hindoo 
idol, before which the natives chop off the heads of goats. 
Why, this is the raving of Timon of Athens ! These men 
are not cynics, but merely philosophers attacking an oppo- 
nent. To my mind all this is sheer nonsense. Men, known 
to be generous and self-devoted in every duty of social life, 
are not believed when they utter tirades of this kind against 
mankind and human nature. 

If the human race be "a half -beast of a creature," if it 
be this dismal " bubble," what else or what better have we? 
Why should they, or any man, waste lives of effort in its 
service; what is the worth of anything generous, humane, 
and social? Humanity, I say, is nothing but the sum of 
all the forces of individual men and women ; and if it be this 
mere bubble and half -beast, the men and women that make 
it up, and the human feelings and forces which have created 
it, must be equally worthy of our loathing and contempt. 
In that case our only philosophy is a malignant pessimism, 
exceeding anything ever attempted in misanthropy before. 
I am no optimist; and I certainly see no "godhood" in the 
human race. I am as much alive to the vice and weakness 
of the human race as any one. But I feel, in common with 
the great majority of sound-hearted men, that there is a 
great deal of human nature in the human race, and that of 
good human nature; that the good abundantly predomi- 
nates, and that the great story of human progress is on the 
whole a worthy and an inspiring record. At any rate, this 
planet, and, so far as we know, this Universe, has nothing 
(in the moral sphere) which is more worthy and more in- 
spiring of hope. Divinities, and Absolute Goodnesses, and 
Absolute Powers have ended for us. The relative goodness 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 38 1 

and power of our race remains a solid reality. It is bone of 
our bone, and flesh of our flesh ; the stuff whereof our mothers 
and our fathers, our sons and our friends, our fellow-citizens 
are made : whereof are made all who with us and beside us 
are striving to live a humane life. 

I will not do my friends the injustice of supposing that 
any regard for men which they acknowledge is confined to 
their own belongings and circles, and that for the rest of 
mankind they feel (what they assert) supreme contempt and 
dislike. Their words would suggest it. To Mr. Spencer 
Europe presents nothing but the revolting prospect of "a 
hundred millions of Pagans masquerading as Christians." 
Sir James Stephen says that a majority of the human race 
cannot read, and devote their time to nothing but daily 
labour. Are they mere beasts for that? Some of the 
greatest and best of men could not read ; some of the noblest 
natures on earth are spent in the hovel and the garret of the 
poor. It is the task of the religion of Humanity to correct 
such anti-social thoughts, the besetting sin of the philosopher 
and the man of power. It will teach their pride that the 
nobility of human nature is to be found chiefly in the cottage 
and the workshop; where the untaught mother is lavishing 
on her children unutterable wealth of tenderness; where 
the patient toiler is subduing the earth that for the common 
good wise men may have an earth whereon to think out the 
truth, and the poet and the artist may have materials to 
satisfy us all with beauty. 

Comte, of all men, did not choose out five hundred names 
to be " worshipped" as "saints," devoting the five hundred 
millions to oblivion. He taught us to see the greatness of 
human nature in the love and courage of the ignorant, as 
well as in the genius and the might of the hero. And when 
we think of Humanity our minds are not set on a band of 



382 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

the "elect," but on the millions who people this earth and 
subdue it, leaving each century on the whole a richer inheri- 
tance in comfort, in thought, in virtue ; — millions, not in 
the civilised world only, but in the rude plains of Asia, and 
of, Africa, where the Hindoo struggles to rear an honest 
household in his plot of rice-field, and the fellah yields to 
the will of Heaven with sublime patience, whilst retaining 
uncrushed his human heart. Assuredly it is no "godhood" 
that we see there, no pride of human reason, no millennium, 
or transfiguration of Man. But it is human nature, sound 
down to its depths; rich with unfathomable love wherever 
there is a mother and a child, and rich with undying courage 
wherever there is the father of an honest and thriving house- 
hold. 

But it is not the present generation which absorbs our 
thoughts. Mankind, as we see it to-day, is neither god-like 
nor very sublime. But the story of human progress during 
fifty centuries, from the " half -beast" that it once was in the 
prehistoric ages down to the ideal civilisation which we 
surely foresee in the far-off ages to come — this is sublime. 
Or, if not sublime in the way in which the fairy-tale of 
Paradise, or the Creation of the Universe, is sublime, it is 
still the most splendid tale of moral development of which 
we have any certain record. I am not at all disenchanted 
when I am reminded of the savagery, the bestiality, or even 
the cannibalism of man's early career. There were noble 
savages even in the Palaeolithic ages, and even the earliest 
type of man was superior in something, I suppose, to con- 
temporary types of the ape. But such as he was I accept 
him as the ancestor of the human race, to whom it owes its 
first beginning. The glory of Humanity is not lost, in that 
it was once so low, but lies in that, beginning so low, it is 
now so high. 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 383 

It is for this reason that Comte has insisted so much on 
the Past, and the religious value of a true conception of hu- 
man civilisation. It shocks Mr. Spencer to look with any- 
thing but horror on our fighting and savage forefathers. 
But, such as they were, they made civilisation possible. 
And the grandeur of human civilisation as a whole can only 
be realised in the mind when it constantly dwells on the 
enormous record of its progress from the half-bestial begin- 
nings out of which it has slowly arisen by incalculable efforts 
and hopes. Still, it is a record of much failure, of short- 
coming at the best. And for this reason, Positivism dwells 
quite as much in the Future as in the Past. Endless progress 
towards a perfection never, perhaps, to be reached, but to 
be ideally cherished in hope, a hope which every stroke of 
science and every line of history confirms to us, and with 
which every generous instinct of our nature beats in unison 
— such is the practical heaven of our faith. As there is no 
godhood now in humanity, so there is no Paradise in its 
future. Past, Present, and Future, all alike dwell on this 
earth; on the facts of man's actual career in the dwelling- 
place that he has made for himself thereon. 

Mr. Spencer is himself far too much of a philosopher, 
and too much of a believer in moral progress, not to have a 
deep faith in this very march of civilisation of which Hu- 
manity, as I understand it, is at once product and author. 
He says himself: " Surely civilised society, with its complex 
arrangements and involved processes, its multitudinous ma- 
terial products and almost magical instruments, its language, 
science, literature, art, must be credited to some agency or 
other." The words are not mine, but his. That is to say, 
the story of human civilisation is a very noble record, de- 
manding, as he admits, "veneration and gratitude" some- 
where. And in these words he throws to the winds "the 



384 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

bubble," and "the dull leaden-hued thing," "the hundred 
million Pagans masquerading," "the stupid, ignorant, half- 
beast of a creature," as the judge calls it. The human race 
then is not the odious bubble ; on the contrary, the splendid 
story of human civilisation must fill us with a sense of "vener- 
ation and gratitude." But by astonishing perversity, as it 
seems to me, by long habit of "persistent thinking along 
defined grooves," Mr. Spencer has nothing but contempt for 
the human race, and lavishes his "veneration and gratitude," 
called out by the sum of human civilisation, upon his Un- 
knowable and Inconceivable Postulate. This is to me to 
outdo the ingratitude of the theologians who find "man only 
vile," and who ascribe every good thing in man's evil nature 
to an ineffable Being. Since Mr. Spencer agrees with me 
that "veneration and gratitude," for all that man has be- 
come, are due somewhere, I prefer to ascribe it to that human 
race which we know and feel ; and which, so far as we can 
see, has fashioned its own destiny, in spite of tremendous 
obstacles in his environment; rather than to a logician's 
formula, about which the logician himself tells us that he 
knows nothing and conceives nothing. 

Mr. Spencer has laboured to prove that Humanity (which 
he himself has so admirably described as a real organism) 
is unconscious. He might have spared his pains. Neither 
Comte, nor any rational Positivist, has ever regarded Hu- 
manity as conscious. And, for that reason, nothing will 
induce me to address Humanity as a conscious being, or in 
any way whatever to treat it as a Person. In that respect it 
stands on the same footing as Mr. Spencer's Unknowable, 
except that I say frankly that I have not the least reason to 
suppose Humanity to be conscious; whilst he will not say 
that his Unknowable may not be conscious (as it might be a 
vibration or a parallelopiped). And then Mr. Spencer goes 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 385 

on to argue that, since Humanity is not conscious, that con- 
cludes the matter; "for gratitude cannot be entertained 
towards something which is unconscious." And by a really 
curious inconsistency he asserts that "veneration and grati- 
tude" are due towards the Unknowable, which he has just 
told us cannot be conceived in terms of consciousness at all ! 
So that he will not let me feel any gratitude to the human 
race, my own kindred, because it is unconscious; and he 
asks me to bestow it all on his unconscious, or non-conscious, 
or outside-of-all-consciousness Unknowable. 

Apart from this singular slip in logic, he says much about 
the unconsciousness of the human race which amazes me. 
Why cannot a man feel any gratitude towards that which is 
unconscious? He tells us to examine our consciousness. 
Well ! Did all the gratitude which he felt during life to his 
own parents, teachers, and benefactors cease at the instant 
of their death? I cannot find it in my consciousness. My 
gratitude to my parents is the same, living or dead ; and, if 
gratitude to one parent can be expressed and answered in 
words, whilst gratitude to the other lies but in the silent 
communing of the heart, I cannot find that the one gratitude 
differs from the other, save that this last is the deeper, more 
abiding feeling. And, if a man is unworthy of the name of 
man who can feel no gratitude to a parent or a benefactor, 
the moment they are laid cold in death, why cannot a man 
feel grateful to the school where he was trained, or the church 
wherein he was reared, or the country of his forefathers and 
his descendants? And by school, church, or country, I 
mean the men therein grouped, some known, some unknown, 
some by personal contact, some by spiritual influence, by 
whose labour he has reaped and grown. 

Mr. Spencer goes further in the same line. Since the 
human race, he says, was unconscious whilst slowly evolving 



386 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

its own civilisation, since the individual men and women 
were not consciously conferring any benefits on us, and 
very partially foresaw the result of their own labour, we owe 
them no gratitude. They acted automatically or like coral- 
polyps by instinct, following their own natures, satisfying 
their own craving, and we owe them no more gratitude than 
we owe to hogs for fattening, or to sheep for growing woolly 
coats. Watt, according to this view, invented the steam- 
engine to make money, or occupy his mind. Newton and 
Leibnitz toiled only for fame. If the poets and artists created 
beauty, it was because they liked beauty, and hoped for re- 
ward. I confess this seems to me to strike at the root of 
morality and all estimate whatever of human greatness and 
merit. A philosopher will tell us next that he owes no 
gratitude to the father who begat him, or the mother who 
nursed him; for both were obeying instincts which they 
share with the lowest animals. If heroes, poets, and thinkers 
are mere automata, selfishly and blindly following instincts, 
like the polyps working their tentacles and thereby forming a 
coral reef, morality, and most of the moral qualities of man, 
are things which we cannot predicate of man at all. 

Man is no doubt a highly complex being, and his moral, 
intellectual, and physical natures are blended in marvellous 
ways. It was never pretended by the optimist that any man 
has acted uniformly on the noblest motives ; but it has never 
been asserted by the pessimist that he acts invariably on the 
vilest. It is a mark of the meanest nature to refuse to 
acknowledge a benefit, on the ground that the benefactor 
was not wholly absorbed with the wish to benefit, or entirely 
aware of the extent of his benefit. For my part, I refuse to 
measure out my sense of gratitude to my human benefactors, 
known or unknown, by so niggardly a rule. I trust that 
RafTaelle and Shakespeare did enjoy their work. But I love 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 387 

and admire the genius in which they revelled. Humanity is 
rich with gratitude to those who knew not the value of the 
services they were rendering, just as it is to those whose 
names and services are covered in the vast wave of time. 
What becomes of Patriotism, if it be open to us to suggest 
that the men who fought our battles or made our country 
wanted nothing but money or fame? What becomes of 
family affection, if a man can tell his mother that bore 
him that if she reared children it was only what cats and 
rabbits do? 

The religion of Humanity, as we understand it, is nothing 
but the idealised sum of those human feelings and duties 
which all decent men acknowledge in detail and in fact. All 
healthy morality, as well as all sound philosophy, show us that 
the sum total of all this mass of life is good, and is tending 
towards better. As Mr. Spencer admits, civilised society 
as a whole must command " admiration and gratitude" 
somewhere. This being so, the sneers of philosophers and 
cynics may be left out of sight. I shall not follow Mr. Spen- 
cer in the wails of his Jeremiad over the folly and wickedness 
of his contemporaries. Millions, he says, still go to church 
and chapel, instead of studying Evolution and Differentiation, 
or praying to the Unknowable at home. At Eton and Har- 
row boys are taught to make Latin verses, and not the genesis 
of species. The House of Commons will not let Mr. Brad- 
laugh take his seat; and many still admire Lord Beacons- 
field. Many people were sorry when young Bonaparte was 
killed by the Zulus ; and they gave a dinner to Hobart Pasha. 
At a dinner in France, the "army " was given as a toast. And 
German students will fight duels. And for these reasons 
Mr. Herbert Spencer has a great contempt for his species. 
Risum teneatis, amici? I must treat this as a mere outburst 
of ill-humour. We all know that then i folly, vice, and 



388 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

misery enough in the world — and for that reason all absolute 
"worship" of any one or anything are out of the question. 
Strangely enough, Mr. Spencer, who finds this folly and vice 
preclude him from any respect for Humanity, does not see 
that it ought also to bar any " veneration and gratitude" 
to the Unknowable ; to which he ascribes the honour of pro- 
ducing civilised society, in spite of all its shortcomings. For 
my part I am not to be shaken in my belief that the sum of 
civilised society is relatively worthy of honour, by such melan- 
choly facts as that Mr. Bradlaugh cannot get his seat, and that 
German students slit each others' noses. 

Mr. Spencer raises a great difficulty over the fact that there 
are, and have been, very evil people in the world, who can- 
not be included in the Humanity which we are to honour. 
And he asks why they are excluded from the notion. He 
cannot reconcile Comte's definition of Humanity "as the 
whole of human beings, past, present, and future," with the 
statement that "the word whole points out that you must not 
take in all men." If Mr. Spencer would take some pains to 
understand Comte, he would see that the French word is 
"ensemble" ; that is to say, Humanity includes the sum of 
human civilisation, but does not include every individual 
man, who may not have contributed at all to this ensemble 
or "sum." No one has worked out the organic unity and 
life of the Human Organism more clearly than Mr. Spencer 
himself. When we think and speak of that organism, we 
think and speak of those organs and elements which share 
in its organic life, and not of the excrescences, maladies, or 
excrement, so to speak, which it has finally eliminated. 

Men have a warm regard for their family, though there 
may be a blackguard in it, for whom they have no regard at 
all. They feel loyalty to their profession or their party, 
though they know that it counts not a few black sheep. 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 389 

And patriotism is quite possible towards our countrymen past 
and present, though some of the worst men in history have been 
amongst them. We are justly proud of our English race; 
but when we speak of its achievements we are not including 
in our honour King John, Guy Fawkes, and Titus Oates. 
If the existence of a minority of evil men makes it impossible 
to think of Humanity as a whole, or to honour it as a whole, 
the same argument would make it impossible to think 
of country as a whole, or to honour it as a whole. And 
this applies also to what Mr. Spencer calls " civilised 
society." 

The analogies of Humanity are to be found with such minor 
aggregates of civilised society as Family, Church, State, Coun- 
try. It has no analogy at all with God, or divinity in any 
form. When Mr. Spencer says that we " deify" Humanity, 
it would be as just to say that he deifies Evolution. He thinks 
that Evolution is the key of our mental and moral Synthesis. 
I think that Humanity is. But as I do not suppose that he 
finds "any claims to godhood" in Evolution, I beg him not 
to suppose that I find any in Humanity. If Family, Church, 
State, Country, are real aggregates, worthy of gratitude and 
respect, a fortiori, Humanity is a real aggregate, worthy of 
respect and gratitude. I cannot understand how the smaller 
aggregates can inspire us with any worthy sentiment at all, 
whilst the fuller aggregate of the Family of Mankind inspires 
nothing but contempt and aversion. 

A few words on the original idea put forth by Sir James 
Stephen. Suppose that it turns out, he says, there is no pos- 
sible object of Religion left to man, cannot he do very well 
without Religion altogether? It is a view that is often 
secretly cherished by the comfortable, the strong, and the 
selfish; but I am not aware that it has ever been calmly 
argued before as a contribution to the philosophy of religion. 



390 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

If his meaning be that we can do without adoration of any 
superhuman power, without believing anything to be above 
human science, or out of the range of human life, of course 
I wholly agree with him. And if he thinks that mankind 
will get on very well by means of human education, human 
morality, and the sense of practical duty to our fellow-beings 
— then he is something of an unconscious Positivist himself, 
and no one will ask him to go on his knees to an abstract 
notion, or to go through any imitation of Christian or other 
theological practices which he may regard as mummery. 
For my part, I neither desire nor expect that Christian charity, 
or Christian morality of any kind, will be preserved. It 
will be enlarged and solidified into human charity and 
human morality. And adopting all that Sir James has said 
thereon, I claim him as speaking on my side — as he certainly 
repudiates Mr. Spencer. 

But this human charity and human morality will never be 
established if the peculiar cynicism which Sir James affects 
about the human race were ever to prevail. He says most 
truly that "love, friendship, good-nature, kindness, carried 
to the height of sincere and devoted affection, will always be 
the chief pleasures of life, whether Christianity be true or 
false." Comte himself never put it higher, and I am think- 
ing of quoting this sentence as the text of my next discourse 
at Newton Hall. But this will not be so — love, friendship, 
kindness, and devoted affection will not always be the chief 
pleasures of life — if philosophers succeed in persuading the 
world that the human race are a set of Yahoos. Sir James 
also sees that, apart from any theology whatever, the social 
nature of man will itself produce "a solid, vigorous, useful 
kind of moral standard"; and he goes on to show that this 
morality will have a poetic side, will affect the imagination 
and the heart by becoming idealised, and issuing in enthu- 



AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS 39 1 

siasm as well as conviction. O upright Judge ! O most 
learned Judge ! 

I ask no more than this. The Religion of Humanity means 
to me this solid, vigorous, useful, moral standard, based on 
the belief that sincere and devoted affection is the chief pleas- 
ure of life, cultivated and idealised till it produces enthusiasm. 
Only I insist that it will need the whole force of education 
through life, all the resources which engender habits, stir the 
imagination, and kindle self-devotion, in order to keep this 
spirit alive in the masses of mankind. The cultivated, the 
thoughtful, and the well-to-do can nourish this solid morality 
in a cool, self-contained, sub-cynical way. But to soften 
and purify the masses of mankind we shall need all the pas- 
sion and faith which are truly dignified by the name of reli- 
gion — religious respect, religious sense of duty, religious be- 
lief in something vastly nobler and stronger than self. They 
will find this in the mighty tale of human civilisation. They 
will never find it in the philosopher's hypothesis of an Infinite 
Unknowable substratum, which " cannot be presented in 
terms of human consciousness," of which we can know noth- 
ing and can conceive nothing. Nor do I think they will ever 
find it in the common-sense maxim that "this is a very com- 
fortable world for the prudent, the lucky, and the strong." 

To all that many others have said, as to the same difficul- 
ties and weaknesses confronting the idea of Humanity as 
meet that of the Unknowable, I could have little trouble in 
showing, that as we claim for Humanity nothing absolute, 
nothing unreal, and nothing ecstatic, no such difficulties arise. 
It is a strength and a comfort to all, whether weak, suffering, 
or bereaved, to feel that the whole sum of human effort in the 
past, as in the present, is Steadily working, on the whole, to 
lessen the sum of misery, to help the fatherless and the widow, 
to assuage sickness, and to comfort the lonely. This is a real 



392 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

and solid encouragement, proved by all the facts of progres- 
sive civilisation. If it is not the comfort offered by promises 
of ecstatic bliss, and supernatural intervention, it has the 
merit of being true and humane ; not egoist and untrue. If 
it is not enough, it is at least all that men and women on earth 
have. Resignation and peace will be theirs when we have 
taught them habitually to know that it is all — when the 
promises of the churches are known to be false, and the hopes 
of the superstitious are felt to be dreams. 






XXIII 
SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 

The following address, given iSth May 1879, was the first 
of a series of discourses undertaken by the Positivist Com- 
mittee in connection with M. Laffitte, the Director of Posi- 
tivism in Paris. The course of addresses was designed 
to put forward and illustrate the six chapters of the "Gen- 
eral View of Positivism" which forms the Introduction to 
Comte's Positive Polity, and also to promote the practical 
realisation of the Religion of Humanity. The present 
discourse answers to the first of the six chapters of the 
"General View." 



Order and Progress .... Live for others. 

The Principle Love. 

The Foundation Order. 

The End Progress. 

Such are the words which Auguste Comte inscribed, as 
the symbol and summary of our creed, on the first page of 
the work wherein he pictured in one system the scheme of 
life that had been forming itself in a long course of human 
history — the Religion of Humanity. 

The whole of this work of his, the Positive Polity, is but 
the development of the thought which is embodied in these 
words. What is it that they mean? It is this. 

The true moving force of man's life, individual or social, 

393 



394 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

is Affection : love of our kind, love of right, zeal for the good. 
Let us live for others, for the happiness of man is to live 
as a social being ; let us live for self, only so far that we may 
live more truly for the whole, to which we belong by the very 
nature of man. 

Remembering always that this affection cannot be stable, 
uniform, or efficient unless it have a foundation. It must 
stir us not only to the right things; but to the right things 
through the right means. And to move us aright, it must 
know, or rather be guided by knowledge. Feeling, therefore, 
must ever rest on truth, must be in accord with facts, with all 
the realities around man and within man. And so, the foun- 
dation of right living is the true Order, first, of the world in 
which we find ourselves ; next, of the society of which we are 
units; lastly, of the moral nature of the human soul. And 
that we may conform to these various kinds of order and live 
by them, and with them, we must know them. So knowledge 
is become a necessary condition of duty. 

And yet again, the aim and goal of human life, individual 
as much as social, is improvement; a continual rising into 
a higher state, a firmer morality to each of us, a purer civili- 
sation for our race. To love and desire the good : even to 
know how to achieve it, is not enough : we must labour for it, 
having as our motive, a sound Heart; as our guide, right 
Knowledge. Thus the union of Love for the good with 
Knowledge of the true Order issues finally in one end — 
Progress : material, intellectual, moral : increased mastery 
over nature, wider knowledge, purer hearts, and loftier 
conduct. 

At last, after centuries of divided efforts, Feeling, Thought, 
and Activity come to work in one harmonious whole. And the 
conception of Humanity rises up to give each of the three a 
new meaning. At last we see that it is the vast human whole 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 395 

which is the true source and end of every social union. So we 
see that all we really know is, the world of law translated into 
the language of the human mind, and ordered for the sake of 
human welfare. And lastly, it is the progress of man, and 
of man's earth for the sake of man, that is the noblest ideal of 
activity. Humanity is the embodiment of our highest love, 
the measure of all our knowledge, the object of our true 
activity. It is the source of all we have : the master of our 
present lives : the end of our hopes hereafter. It is at once 
the source and the object of real Religion. 



What Religion Means 

I have used the word Religion — a word which brings us 
face to face with two opposing difficulties and a crowd of 
ambiguities. It is said by some, "What is the need of Reli- 
gion, if you take as your basis of life the entire sum of human 
science? If Religion is true, it is included in science; if it 
is not scientific, it will make life unreal." So argue, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, all who trust for the future of civili- 
sation to bare knowledge of real things, who distrust Theology 
and all forms of emotional creeds. 

On the other side, the objection of all who cling to Theol- 
ogy in any of its many forms is this: "How can there be a 
Religion, if there be no Divinity ? Is Humanity a conception 
that can compare in sublimity with God ? Docs not the 
Reign of Law, which you take as your foundation, destroy the 
possibility of the Infinite, of Omnipotence, of Absolute Good- 
ness; nay more, of Will, of consciousne» in a supreme Being 
of any kind?" 

It is most important to clear up what we mean by Religion. 

If we thought that Religion were something outside of 



396 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

positive science, if it were merely "morality touched with 
emotion," if it were simply a yearning of the spirit after some- 
thing or some being which we intuitively assumed to be, but 
of whom we really know nothing definite, or whom we de- 
liberately take to transcend all human understanding — if 
Religion begins and ends with the worship of a sublime but 
vague ideal — then we say to the sceptic, or the atheist, or 
the man of scientific materialism, "By all means, we will 
have no Religion in that sense. You are right. Come what 
may, we will not build our house upon the sand of elastic 
emotion. " 

If, as some caricaturists would pretend, Positivism was 
designed simply to substitute for the adoration of God the 
adoration of transfigured Man, and to stop there, then it would 
deserve all the contemptuous condemnation of the man of 
science who takes his stand on knowledge of physical laws 
and rejects all Religion altogether. Such a creed would 
make life unreal; it would be in conflict with science; it 
would open human life again to all the danger and confusion 
of giving paramount place to a principle which is ultimately 
an emotion devoid of conviction. For we know that each 
heart and each imagination would unconsciously transform 
and recast that principle for itself. The result would not be 
worth the effort. The new object of adoration would be as 
unreal as the old. 

But we mean something widely different by Religion. 
Religion, with Auguste Comte, means the perfect unison be- 
tween man's intellectual convictions and his affective nature 
— both being devoted to a wisely ordered activity. When 
Intellect, Feeling, and Activity are brought into a consensus, 
so that man's whole powers are exerted harmoniously, in 
accordance with his true conditions and wants, then, and not 
till then, man's life becomes religious. Thus there is no con- 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 397 

trast between science and Religion. Religion is science 
brought to bear upon man's industry and effort at the prompt- 
ing of a noble feeling. Religion is not worship barely, be- 
cause it is not any mere emotion : it is emotion inspired by 
knowledge to issue in action. Nor can Religion have as its 
object anything unknown or unknowable, or vague, or ideal 
only. For it implies the application of the whole of human 
knowledge to a definite purpose, under the fusing warmth 
of love. 

The puzzle laid before man is this. The Intellect is ever 
at work discovering the hidden Laws and relations of Things. 
Man's noblest instincts are ever urging him to devote himself 
to the good ; his lower instincts are constantly urging him to 
devote his energy to self. His energy is ever seeking work for 
its hands — work — product of some kind. How these three 
are to work together is the problem before man. The Intel- 
lect may serve bad instincts as well as good. The good in- 
stincts do not of themselves know how to find the truth. 
By themselves they are less vigorous than the selfish instincts. 
The energy is often wasted in vain efforts, and often is actively 
bad and destructive. Well ! Religion, we say, is the con- 
cordat, or scheme of mutual alliance whereby each of the 
three are brought to co-operate and do their best by the others, 
under the earthly limitations of man's being. 

Can any man say that, in this sense, Religion is superfluous, 
or contrary to science, or a source of unreality ? All serious 
men, whatever their creed, of whatever school, are aiming at 
this. All scientific labour whatever is directed (so far as it 
is not vain display or dilettante trifling) to give the greatest 
extension and unity to science, to bring it to bear most effi- 
ciently on human thought and life. Politicians, thinkers, 
moralists, practical reformers, and abstract theorists — all 
are occupied in bringing man's powers into truer relations 



398 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

with each other. At least they profess to be engaged in this. 
No man but the robber or the satirist is professedly occupied 
in making human life discordant. 

It is the fashion to say, "No doubt human thought and 
activity must be got to harmonise ; but this will come about 
of itself. Let us have no system, no general plan, no direct 
effort after unity. All will go well in the world if everything 
is let alone. The only Gospel is the Gospel of Absolute 
Laissez Faire; there is a plenary inspiration and an all- 
sufficing revelation in Laissez Alter. Individual energy will 
at last shake down into working agreement." 

This is a wide question ; and it cannot be decided a priori, 
without actual study of the system propounded. If Positiv- 
ism, after honest inquiry, be found to be really repressive of 
the spontaneous activity of every individual unit of the com- 
munity, if it repeat the social oppressiveness of the old socialist 
and communist Utopias, if the harmony it offers be only a 
paper constitution, a narrow and inadequate miniature of a 
vast design, then assuredly Positivism deserves to be rejected 
by every free spirit. It would be a toy, a parody of a great 
thing, a nuisance and an obstruction. But no man has a 
right to say this offhand, without honest weighing of its nature 
and its aim. 

To those, who think there is something generous and pro- 
found in the monotonous Formula, "No system," we say, 
What is any kind of education, what is government, or phi- 
losophy; what is general science itself; what is morality; 
what are any of the higher efforts of the human mind, whether 
of creative genius, of force of character — what are these 
but attempts, partial attempts no doubt, to bring into work- 
ing harmony men's varied capacities and energies ? Civilisa- 
tion is made up of the more or less conscious efforts of men so 
to order their lives with a mutual understanding that they may 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 399 

lead to the smallest amount of waste, and the greatest amount 
of common purpose. It is but the frenzy of insurrection 
which has taken for its watchword — "let everything go its 
own way" — when every rational effort of men about us in 
thought or in action, be it in the shape of advice or of law, 
springs from the wish that things should be got to go the right 
way and not the wrong way. Well, Religion, with us, means 
the state in which the human faculties pull together, and all 
pull the right way. 

I turn now to the second class of objectors, the Theologians 
of any school, who mock at a Religion without divinities, 
and ask us if the universal Reign of Law which we proclaim 
does not exclude the very conception of Omnipotence and 
Absolute Goodness. I have said, we mean by Positivism 
an organisation of life, individual and social, and not the bare 
substitution of one object of adoration for another. We do not 
concern ourselves with the Absolute, and the Infinite, or with 
First Causes, or Eternity, or Transcendentals of any kind. 
We are not careful to answer men in this matter at all. We 
neither accept these notions nor deny them, nor disprove 
them, nor denounce them, nor in any way concern ourselves 
about them. Those who choose to found man's life upon the 
Infinite (i.e. the Unintelligible), and upon the Superhuman 
(i.e. the visionary, the vague, the unreal), these men will 
not trouble us, and we shall not trouble them. The right 
ordering of man's life is a thing too serious and vast to be 
decided by any offhand appeal to rival sublimities. 

When Theologians say, "Have you any such sublime 
conception as God to give us? — what can you offer us for 
the eternities, and omnipotence, and absolute goodness that 
you take away?" common sense replies — We take away 
nothing. These things arc slipping away in spite of you 
and without any act of ours. If after eighteen centuries of 



400 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

struggle — nay, twenty-eight or thirty-eight centuries of con- 
tinually new adaptations — this eternity, and omnipotence, 
and absolute goodness, are wholly unable to organise the 
intellectual and practical life of man, if they shrink, generation 
after generation, into a smaller field of life and man's interests, 
if they be ever growing more distinctly disparate with human 
life, and cannot be brought into line with science, and industry, 
and what is called our worldly life at all ; if the utmost that 
Theology can do now is to attentuate itself to a pious wish, 
to urge deprecatingly and timidly that it is not inconsistent 
with science, not incompatible with worldly energy and every 
human delight in life, then we may say that Theology is mani- 
festly unable to deal with the problem. 

It is not enough to be a pious wish, a sublime abstraction. 
It is a miserable claim to be not inconsistent with science, 
not incompatible with energy and culture. The question is, 
Can Theology vitalise, stimulate, co-ordinate science? Can 
it show the relation of science to human progress? Can it 
on the conception of Law build up a religious attitude of 
mind far better than on the conception of arbitrary omnipo- 
tence ? Can Theology (with its vale of tears and its celestial 
crown) honestly direct the myriad efforts of human versatility 
to clothe human life with everything useful, ennobling, lovely ? 
If it cannot do any of these things, it is manifestly unable to 
be the supreme law of human life, for two out of three parts 
of human nature are entirely beyond its reach. 

It says (and it may say truly) its Principle too is Love. 
Yes ! it is the Love of God. But there it stops. It does not 
pretend to say that its Foundation is Order {i.e. positive know- 
ledge of real things), still less can it say its End is Progress — 
physical, material, intellectual, as well as moral, progress. 
It can only ejaculate that its foundation is a Divine Order, 
a thing ever shifting, vague, and purely hypothetical; its 



\ 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 4OI 

end is a transcendental Progress to a supersensuous crown of 
glory. To positive science, to practical human improvement, 
it has nothing whatever to say, except "set not your thoughts 
and affections on this world." In doing this, Theology with- 
draws from human nature. It says to the heart — worship, 
love, obey. To the Intellect, to the Character it has nothing 
to say at all but a pious hope that they will both act to the 
honour and glory of God : and both put their own interpre- 
tation on that. 

Theology, therefore, is not Religion. It does not pretend 
to concentrate and harmonise human nature. It merely 
pretends to soften, console, and purify the heart. In the 
early stages of man's life it did more. There were once forms 
of Theology, which in their day very largely treated human 
nature as a whole, and in all its sides. When man knew very 
little, and led a very simple life, the conception of Gods, 
or God, and the manifold apparatus of Theology, really 
covered the greater part of his life, mental, practical, and 
emotional. 

He heard, borne on the wind, the articulate voice 
Of God; and angels to his sight appeared 
Crowning the glorious hills of Paradise; 
Or through the groves gliding like morning mist 
Enkindled by the sun. He sate and talked 
With winged messengers, who daily brought 
To his small island in the ethereal deep 
Tidings of joy and love. 

Time was when, under the wing of the great Theocracies, 
or under Moses and the Prophets, in early Greece, and Rome, 
in Mediaeval Europe, or in the glory of Islam, and amidst the 
first Bible saints, Theology was practically coextensive with 
life. It really knit human nature into a whole, explained it 
to itself, and taught man his relations to the world around 



402 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

him. But if sublimity, and universality, and omnipotence 
are the mark of what we need, or the test of truth, then 
surely the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, the God of Moses, 
and of David, the Pantheon of Greece and Rome, the 
Paradise of Dante, of St. Bernard, of Thomas a Kempis, 
shows us something far more sublime. Their Gods were 
far more almighty and omnipresent than the abstract, nega- 
tive, hyper-ethereal Deity of a modern cultured theologian, 
a being who can only be described by negations, and 
who is relegated far away from science, politics, industry, 
culture, beauty — far away from every human sphere but 
that of metaphysical meditation; who is too neutral to con- 
flict with science, too ethereal to be dragged into practical 
fact, too subjective to have any consistent part in controlling 
man's real life and external activity. 

No ! it is not now, when, century after century, Theology 
has been gradually withdrawing from the field of human 
nature, until it has reached almost the vanishing point, now 
that its sole hope is in its very indefiniteness, and its sole 
justification that it does not meddle either with thought, or 
art, or practical activity or social order, it is not now that we 
can listen to its claim that it is so sublime and universal; 
touching, though it may be, is yet its power over the heart as 
well as the imagination, and exquisite as are often the products 
of its saintlier lives. The sublimity, the purity, the saintliness 
of its ideal, and often of its fruits, we see them all — and we 
trust we may preserve them and make them our own. But 
our present business is far more than simply to find a sublime 
ideal, or even to get a conception of exquisite pathos, with 
power to humble and to console the heart. Our business is 
to bring Religion once more to bear upon life and humanity, 
by finding that key of life which will correlate at once life and 
humanity in all their sides, after all the vast development 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 403 

they have had in modern ages. And this Theology cannot do, 
or at least does not do. 

This same objection, it will be seen, applies equally to 
Theology of every kind, under every one of its modern forms, 
from that of the sternest Bible Puritanism or that of the most 
mystical Catholic cloister to the flimsiest cloud-shadow of 
God which engages the fancy of the modern litterateur or 
metaphysician. These rationalised Trinities, these residua 
and survivals of the bare old Deisms, these "defecated" 
hypotheses of a possible divine abstraction, these indescribable 
" eternals that make for righteousness," and all the other 
phrases by which clever men try to escape from the obvious 
difficulties they feel in saying God when they do not mean 
God — these are even less Religion than are the orthodox 
Theologies. The Unitarian formula which seeks to escape 
from logical contradictions by discarding the Athanasian 
Creed, the Neo-Christianity which seeks to escape from 
historical criticism by giving up the Bible as the word of God 
and the scheme of Redemption as the basis of its creed, these 
philosophical conundrums which try to save Theology by 
veiling it in an impenetrable cloud-land — these have less to 
say to human nature, to thought, and energy, to modern science 
and industrial life, even than the Vatican itself, or Calvinism 
pure and simple. 

The Vatican, it is true, offers nothing but the Syllabus for 
its mode of treating science and society. That we think 
is farcical enough. Calvinism ostentatiously declares that 
science and society are worldly, and therefore ungodly, and 
withdraws into its chamber to commune with its God. But 
it still finds its God commensurate with its own life, all 
stunted and distorted as that life is. Even these two have 
something to say about life — practical life, thought, conduct, 
happiness. But the bare Deist, the Rationalising Theist, 



404 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

the Metaphysical dreamer about a hypothetical First Cause, 
such as these are simply withdrawing from the field alto- 
gether. Their creed has nothing to say to man, and man's 
life, except what each man may find it in his own head or heart 
to say — which is a sort of Religion as you like it. They 
fancy they are dexterously avoiding the difficulties, logical 
or historical. But, in avoiding difficulties, they are more 
and more surrendering the whole field of human nature, in- 
tellectual, practical, aye, and moral too — for their Religion 
is refined down to a metaphysical puzzle. This is not Reli- 
gion at all. They make Religion, in its flight, abandon the 
whole field of human nature which it is the business of Religion 
to transform and guide — which it once did transform and 
guide. They abandon it to those who have something to say 
about the reordering of human nature as a whole. 

II 

The Problem of Life 

Let us see what the problem really is. Every Religion, 
every complete philosophy, and every systematic social Polity, 
aims at making man's life more harmonious within, more 
complete in social union, and in truer relation to the world 
around us. It is the fashion nowadays to say that Religion 
explains the relation of Man to the Infinite, or of Man to the 
Universe, of man to the mysterious questions within him, or 
the immensity without him. But this is merely a modern, 
narrow, and perfectly artificial idea of Religion. The Reli- 
gion of Moses, or of St. Paul, meant something far more than 
the relations of these individuals to the Infinite, or their unex- 
pressed and inexpressible yearnings after something myste- 
rious. Religion then meant a comprehensive scheme of life 
and thought which made the man as a whole feel at rest, in 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 405 

health, in harmonious unison within him ; which knit bodies 
of men having the same belief into a common mode of thought, 
and life, and activity; and lastly, which laid down the rule 
of life as marked out by their human lot, and showed them 
the only path to sustained Happiness. It thus did three things. 
It bound the human powers into a whole, and taught them to 
work as one ; it united men in masses of believers ; it imposed 
on them a rule of life. To harmonise the soul within, to draw 
men together, to regulate their whole lives, always was, and 
still is, the real business of Religion. The idea that Religion 
is concerned only with the Infinite and undefined yearnings 
is a modern piece of sentiment. 

The difficulty of the task lies in this complexity of human 
nature, its contrasted elements, and the overpowering limita- 
tions upon man's destiny imposed by the facts of nature. 
Man has instincts, appetites, emotions ; — violent or languid, 
selfish or unselfish, animal or tender, common or sublime. 
Man has intellectual powers, ranging from the lowest cunning 
to the most lofty imagination. He has qualities of energy, 
prudence, perseverance, courage : faculties that may make a 
hero, or may make a miser or a tyrant. Besides all this triple 
endowment of qualities, man is a social being, and his nature 
can only be developed by society with his fellows, and is 
deeply modified by that society. Lastly, this complex, modi- 
fied, social being finds himself in a world of tremendous forces 
and boundless opportunities, where his whole energy some- 
times can hardly sustain his life, which sometimes offers un- 
limited gratifications to his appetites, vast fields of conquest 
to his activity, perpetual pabulum for his inquiring thought. 
In this Chaos of necessities, allurements, opportunities with- 
out, in this conflict of forces within man, what is to be 
the spring of his life; which is to lead, which is to rule; 
what is to be the end, the result of the whole? To these 



406 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

questions all sorts of answers may be given, and have been 
given. 

At the outset, the active energetic powers had it all their 
own way, casually stimulated first by one passion, then by 
another. Man thought just enough to get his weapons or 
win his battles. On a large scale, too, some famous societies, 
both in the old world of war and in the modern world of in- 
dustry, have appeared to be based on the dominant scheme of 
activity. But societies or men which are absorbed in the 
blind rage for practical achievement, be it in fighting, robbing, 
producing, or trading, are soon found to be unsound. They 
are seen to be turned into slaves of some ignoble appetite, 
and the force of society about them, or the facts of nature, 
bring them down and remind them that in headlong surrender 
to activity they were really the creatures of passion. 

It has often been suggested that the dominant element in 
life should be sought for in some intellectual principle — in 
the search for truth, the superiority of knowledge, and the 
like. But when we come to examine it, we find that the search 
for truth is not a motive power at all. Truth can tell us how 
to do a thing, but it cannot impel us to do it. The motive 
source must be a feeling, or a desire. A profound knowledge 
of nature may be used either to enrich mankind or to commit 
assassination. Thought is neutral — it may act under an evil 
or an indifferent or a noble motive. It always acts under some 
impulse of the feelings, moral or immoral. Nor can thought 
command. The mind gives light ; it does not give force. It 
is dispersive, and may exercise itself in the boundless fields of 
curiosity. By itself thought can neither concentrate man's 
life on a uniform purpose, nor sustain and stimulate him to 
enduring action. Lastly, it appears that the intellectual 
energy of the mass of mankind is far too moderate to con- 
stitute within them a principle of life. One in a thousand of 



\ 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 



407 



us may really be capable of a life of intellectual effort. Nine 
hundred and ninety-nine make use of their intellects to serve 
their ends. How often beneath the show of a passion for 
intellectual engrossment do we find some refined egoism, some 
concealed vanity or ambition ! The character which is given 
over to speculation is often a character of curious feebleness. 
A society which proclaims the supremacy of intellectual 
excitement is a society without steadiness, morality, dignity, 
or tenderness. 

Therefore since the harmonising principle of life cannot 
be permanently found either in the intellectual or the active 
powers, there remain only the moral on which we can found 
it. To which out of the various affections and appetites of 
man are we to turn? Obviously not to the lower appetites, 
or the self-regarding passions; violent, necessary even, and 
ever-present, as some of them are. It is a contradiction in 
terms to say that any man was ever raised to a higher nature 
or became a truer man by means of consistent devotion to one 
of his lower appetites; and it would be equally paradoxical 
to pretend that societies of men are civilised and united by 
the humanising power of the Gospel of selfishness. We may 
leave this singular form of Religion to the more fanatical 
disciples of the doctrines of Plutonomy. 

It is plain that the harmonising principle must be found 
in the higher or unselfish instincts, in our feelings of Attach- 
ment, of Veneration, of Goodness : in those fine gifts of our 
nature which move us to devote ourselves to something out- 
side us, to humble ourselves in awe before something that is 
greater than ourselves, to use our powers for good, for the 
benefit of our fellows and the common weal. 

And thus it is that every Religion, or social system of any 
kind, which was ever worthy of the name, has aimed at regu- 
lating human nature and organising society by proclaiming 



408 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

as the principle of life the cultivation of some one or more of 
the great social feelings. They have used all sorts of devices, 
combinations, and forms. But priests, philosophers, moral- 
ists, and preachers of every creed have ever said, "Base 
your life upon a noble feeling, if you are to live aright ; base 
the State upon a generous devotion of its members to some 
great ideal, if it is to prosper and be strong." The old He- 
brews placed it in submission to their tribal God, who repre- 
sented to them the spirit of Theocratic patriotism. The old 
Romans placed it in courageous devotion to the Eternal 
Destiny of Rome. The older Greeks placed it in the adorn- 
ment of their lives and of their cities with every ennobling 
attitude and grace. Christ and St. Paul placed it in humility, 
charity, longsuffering, mercy, purity. Mahomet placed it in 
utter devotion of self to the Will of an overruling Providence. 
The Catholic Church has found it in Veneration for the divine 
beings, and the cultivation of every Christian grace. The 
Protestant Churches have found it in obedience to the written 
word of God, and the ever-present sense of saving the believer's 
soul by a life of Love and Faith. All of these systems con- 
ceived that they could harmonise Life by placing it under the 
stimulus of a high unselfish passion. 

And they were all right so far. There is no other basis on 
which man's life can be knit and society ennobled but by con- 
scious devotion to some great Cause represented by a dominant 
Power. It was by virtue of this Truth that these various socie- 
ties exhibited such wonderful powers, and produced such 
memorable results. They were strong by means of it; 
neither men nor races have been strong without it. This great 
truth lingers on even in the attenuated fragments which sur- 
vive in the modern Theologies and Theistic philosophies. 
Powerless as they are to deal with contemporary Thought 
and Life, they still command respect and a clinging devotion 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 409 

from masses of men and women, and from some of the noblest 
spirits of our time, because in spite of their want of logic, force, 
humanity, or usefulness, they still do testify to the beauty of 
holiness, and the inspiring might of a lofty sense of devotion. 
Now Positivism declares that, come what may, this is the root 
of the matter. It holds with the Theologies, with all the 
Theologies, that the key of man and of life is, as they ever 
said : Love, Veneration, Devotion. 

Wherein, then, was their utter and portentous failure, if 
they were right in this main point ? How is it that they have 
failed so strikingly both to assimilate science and to moralise 
industry? Why is it that their power is exerted but fitfully 
and slightly over one corner alone of human nature, whilst 
the breach they have made with the rest of human nature 
grows wider and wider every day? 

Obviously, it was because their spiritual elevation and 
devotion were not according to Knowledge — not in corre- 
spondence with Fact. Touching man's noblest feelings they 
called on men to bow down to imaginary beings ; when men 
asked them for evidence of these beings and proof of their 
doings, the Theologies could only answer "Believe in faith !" 
They invented childish theories about the earth and our 
world and the facts of nature, and treated the Intellect of 
Man as if it were a slave. They talked about the arbitrary 
intervention of mysterious wills and deities, when Science 
kept on showing us for ever new evidence of the Reign of 
Law through the World and a total elimination of all arbitrary 
Providences. 

And when men came to act, to conquer this glorious 
earth and to organise their practical life in all the complica- 
tion- of modern material industry, the Theologies of themselves 
could do nothing to civilise and moralise it. They could 
only ejaculate "Lay not up for yourselves treasures where 



410 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through 
and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, 
where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves 
do not break through and steal." Well ! this was to outrage 
the Intellect of man, to trifle with our human energies; and 
the fury with which the man of thought and the man of action 
have so long pursued the Priest and his Theology dates from 
that day when, in the name of man's noblest emotions, man 
was ordered to forswear his reason and his manhood, and, if 
he took these precepts in their literal sense, to debase him- 
self, to become an idle, hysterical, ignorant mystic. Love, 
Veneration, Devotion — Yes ! but everything turns on what 
or whom it is that we Love, Venerate, and Devote ourselves 
to serve ; and how these feelings may be ranged with all we 
know, and may inspire all the work that we find to do in the 
world. 

The more we look at it, the more we see that this cardinal 
error lies at the root of every kind of Theology, or Metaphysical 
Theosophy, whether it take the form of Catholicism or Prot- 
estantism, Polytheism or Buddhism, Spiritualism, Deism, 
or Pantheism. Whether you worship God, or the Virgin 
Mary, or the Principle of Good, or the Anima Mundi, or the 
" Eternal that makes for Righteousness" — if you concentrate 
the noblest sentiments of the human spirit on imaginary and 
superhuman objects, if you place the ideal of happiness and 
perfection in some supersensuous kind of bliss — you must 
place the whole of this influence that you call Religion out- 
side the human reason, which can only deal with the rational 
and the real, and outside the human energies which can only 
act in a human world. A superhuman creed may pretend 
to tell man his relations to the Infinite, and to prepare him for 
eternal bliss — but what is wanted here is something to tell 
him his relations to the Finite where he now is, and how he 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 411 

is to do his work honourably in this transitory but very urgent 
and very difficult bodily life on earth. 

Ill 

Free Thought versus Faith 

But how comes it that, if Theology is so manifestly unable to 
perform its task, it has so long retained the hold it possesses ; 
how comes it that the forces that have driven it from point to 
point have never succeeded to its place? For five centuries 
at least in Europe the struggle has been going on, and in 
every conflict Theology has lost some ground. Over the 
whole field of physical science the Reign of Law has been 
steadily and for ever established. The Heavens no longer 
declare the glory of God; they declare the glory of Kepler, 
Galileo, Newton. Neither Jove nor Jehovah now manifests 
his anger in the thunder, nor rides upon the wings of the 
wind. The electric force now binds two continents together, 
and the law of Storms is yielding up to us the secrets of the 
Gods of Heaven. The famines, the diseases, and the revo- 
lutions which afflict mankind are no longer the judgments 
of God. They are the inevitable sequences of known and 
preventible conditions. 

Thus throughout the whole incalculable array of human 
discoveries, through the vast field of human industry and 
labour, there has stretched itself out a body of scientific 
laws and a wealth of practical achievement which are utterly 
incommensurable with Theology of any kind. These two 
are for ever incompatible — as distinct from each other as a 
dream is distinct from a demonstration in geometry, as distinct 
as a fairy-tale is from the invention of the Electric light. It 
is pretended, indeed, that Theology may yet hold a place be- 
side them. It is not so. The Theology of Moses, of St. 



412 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

Bernard, of Milton could not live beside them for an hour. 
If any Theology can live within their light, it is the metaphysi- 
cal puzzle of some ingenious academic logician. How comes 
it then that this grand scientific movement, which has routed 
Theology in every battle, has failed to take its place in the 
world ; cannot yet win that loyalty and authority which have 
ever been given to Religion ? 

After all, what is it that these vast intellectual achieve- 
ments can offer to mankind? Inexhaustible satisfaction to 
our thirst after Knowledge ; perpetual contrivances for mak- 
ing life richer ; enchanting visions of yet brighter discoveries. 
But after that ? Nothing but boundless fields of knowledge 
and fresh matter for investigation, and fresh appliances for 
life. But Affection, Veneration, Devotion, what of these? 
What power do these sciences and appliances offer to tame 
the turbulent passions and weld the discordant nature; in 
the name of what mighty force do they claim man's Veneration ; 
to what service do they bid him to dedicate his life ? They 
know nothing of these things. They offer him indeed a per- 
petuity of gratified curiosity, the service of pure unalloyed 
Truth, a noble wonder at the immensity and complexity of 
the All. 

I will not deny that there are poets and philosophers here 
and there, of rare and peculiar genius, whom this exclusive 
thirst for Truth may lead to bright and useful lives. But 
what a mockery is this passion for Truth to the mass of the 
men and women around us, if we tell them to make it the 
standard and master of their lives. Curiosity is a low and 
feeble motive to appeal to, if you seek to lift rude men and 
women out of the slough of their selfish passions; love of 
knowledge is a fine thing, but does it prompt men to succour 
the miserable and protect the weak? Truth is sacred, but 
will Truth make men generous, just, and tender, better fathers 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 413 

and husbands, truer friends, braver citizens, more humane 
men ? Wonder is often a healthy state of mind ; but will an 
eternity of wonder at the material world around us fill us 
with gratitude, veneration, and resignation, such as the Mus- 
sulman, or Catholic, or Protestant felt, and may still feel, for 
his living Providence? 

Here then for centuries there has been waged the secular 
conflict between Positive Science on the one side and Theol- 
ogy on the other — Free Thought and Free Life against a 
Supreme Faith and an exalted spirit of Devotion. It has long 
seemed an insoluble Dilemma. Each has something that the 
other cannot destroy. Each has something that the world 
will not accept ; each wants something that the world will not 
forego. In spite of all the Priests of all the creeds, mankind 
will not consent to surrender one jot of their mind's freedom ; 
nor can all the Preachers of a thousand sects persuade them 
to give up their interest in this earthly life. The intellect shall 
be free ; and men will care to live in this world and not in any 
other. On the other hand, in spite of science, men will not 
rest in peace until they have a Faith ; they cannot consent to 
forego a religious sense of duty and reverence. How long is 
this battle to be fought ? Is the Dilemma for ever insoluble ? 

IV 

Solution of the Dilemma 

Positivism professes to be the answer to this momentous 
problem. The keynote of that answer is as follows. There 
must be both Science and Devotion, and the two must occupy 
the same field and be concentrated on the same object. Science 
alone, Theology alone, make a lame and one-sided scheme of 
life, for neither is Religion ; neither gives a unity; and the two 
are incapable of ever coinciding in one. So long as Science 






414 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

is engrossed with the physical facts around us, it is impossible 
to say that Science can present us a religious basis of Life. 
So long as Faith is supposed to be something opposed to 
Knowledge, it is impossible to say that Faith can satisfy 
any rational mind. But the great intellectual fact of our 
generation is this: — that Science has extended its domain 
to the science of Man. Social things have now been brought, 
like physical things, within the realm of Law. The science 
of Society — or Sociology — has arisen. It is the unique 
and resplendent achievement of Auguste Comte. 

No rational thinker now denies that the whole world of 
human activity, of intellectual and moral power, is, like the 
facts of nature, capable of scientific treatment. History, 
the origin and development of civilisation, the economy of 
our social life, the secret springs of our moral life, the laws of 
our intellectual life, are all reduced to a science; less exact 
than our knowledge of the solar system, but equally real and 
far more complex. That which of old time was known as 
Science — the laws of man's physical sphere, or of his physi- 
cal frame — is become but the prologue and ante-chamber 
of Science. The great Science, the sacred Science, the crown 
and summary of all science, is the Science of Man. 

And now this new science unfolds to us an issue out of the 
dilemma. It reveals to us the laws of a Force towards which 
we can feel the highest sense of Sympathy, to whose service 
we can devote ourselves, whose mighty Power over us we can- 
not gainsay, whilst we must accept it with Love and Rever- 
ence. That Force is the vast and overwhelming consensus 
of all human lives, the complex movement through the ages 
of human civilisation and thought. Before this crucial dis- 
covery of human Intelligence it was impossible to feel that 
the truths of science and our noblest sympathies had a com- 
mon object or field. One might wonder at the Firmament of 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 415 

Stars and delight in our study of the planets ; but it was idle 
to love the Planets, or to feel ourselves inspired by the Milky 
Way. It was marvellous to track the secrets of electricity, 
or the analysis of gases; but the lives of men and women 
were never ordered by profound affection for electricity or 
gas. The study of all the forms of life upon the earth enlarged 
our minds, and the physiology of the human frame showed 
us how fearfully and wonderfully we are made ; but no man 
could love the Vegetable or Animal kingdoms as a whole. 
Nay, Anatomy, or even Vivisection itself, were not found alto- 
gether conducive to a reverential and sympathetic state of 
Mind. 

But when we passed into Social Science and found how all 
the other sciences had their issue and meaning in the Science 
of Man, when we found how they all served as the instruments 
and materials for the glorious human Fabric, when we learned 
how the long succession of ages had developed man's mind 
and powers, how civilisation was advancing with sure and 
widening progress, how the efforts of the human race stood 
round each of us from the cradle to the grave, how the 
thoughts of the wise, and the works of heroes, and the influ- 
ence of every noble life made us what we are — then we felt 
at last that the Realm of Law was become the Realm of Love. 
There was now a human Providence which watched over us, 
taught us, guided us, ruled us; there was a supreme Power 
which we might serve, but with which we could not contend; 
there was a Cause to which to devote our lives and which could 
inspire all the warmth of our souls. That cause was the on- 
ward march of the human race, and its continual rising to a 
better mode of life. 

Thus then Science at last has brought us to the feet of a 
Power for which we can feel all those emotions of Love, Ven- 
eration, and Devotion that have been so long lavished upon 



41 6 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

the creations of our fancy or our fear. Man can again become 
a religious being, for the deepest principle of his nature is 
again the service of a Power for Good above him. But ob- 
serve the vast difference in the new form that Religion has 
taken. This Power for Good is real, provable, human. 
It is entirely within the sphere of the Intellect, and is mani- 
fested by the efforts of the Intellect. The intellect is no longer 
the slave, or the foe, of the devotional ardour. It is its help- 
mate, its guide, and instructor. The new Power is not a 
transcendental ideal which drags man away from his life on 
earth. It is as human as himself; it offers not the ideal of 
one Christ, but the reality of all the Christs ; one with us, 
tried as we are, suffering as we are, bound by the same laws 
of matter, and united by the same conditions. It is not, in- 
deed, Eternal, Almighty, Omniscient, Perfect — that is to 
say, it is not unintelligible, unreal, unhuman. If it were 
these things it would stand apart from our intellects, and be 
indifferent to the best of our practical energies. But relatively 
to us, it is perpetual, mighty, provident, benevolent. So that 
if Religion, at first sight, seem in its new form to have lost 
something in sublimity and intensity, it has gained everything 
in reality, in comprehensiveness, in usefulness, in humanity. 
It is just because the new object of our highest Reverence 
is brought down from Heaven to earth, is brought within the 
range of our human powers, that it gives such a mighty stimu- 
lus to our reason, to our energies, to our zeal for every kind of 
Good. An infinite Trinity, or an infinite Godhead, is indeed 
incomprehensible, is above our intellect; does not need our 
thoughts; cannot be tracked out by finite minds. An Al- 
mighty Creator does not need our efforts; there is no work 
of His that we can really do, for His all-seeing Providence can 
baffle everything we attempt. He needs not our well-doing, 
for He is beyond all service and all good. We are to give Him 



SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 417 

nothing but praises : we may show our virtue by benevolence ; 
but virtue is not devoutness ; "when we have done all that is 
commanded of us, we must say, We are unprofitable servants." 
Silent adoration is all we can really give. "Thou art neces- 
sary to me," says the Catholic Mystic to his God; "I am 
not necessary to thee!" In every way that we turn it, an 
Absolute Perfection paralyses our reason, unmans our energies, 
refines away even active goodness into a mere ecstatic prayer. 
Monks and Nuns are logically consistent with their creed. 

But the power of Humanity calls up every fibre of our brains 
to understand its organism, to learn its forces, and to know its 
difficulties. We are all necessary to Humanity, for we are a 
part of it ; it needs every faculty of our natures ; not a stroke 
of our true work is lost to it ; not one of our human offerings 
is valueless ; every good word, and act, and gentle touch has 
its fruit and serves our kind ; every smile that we shed upon 
a child is an act of devotion to our Human Providence. 

And yet let us beware of thinking that all this is bounded 
and ended by a vague Humanitarianism. If Religion meant 
simply that men and women would be saved by trusting to 
indefinite Progress, by relying on general goodness, and utter- 
ing encomiums on human dignity, Religion would lead to some 
extraordinary types of character, and would end in as little 
as so many kinds of vague worship and hope. On the con- 
trary, Humanity, we say, is placed in a hard world, and has a 
world of hard work before it. There are mountains of things 
to be learned, of things to be done, of things to be practised. 
All round the human race stand the hard forces of Matter, and 
the difficult and complicated facts of science. Society cannot 
be touched without knowledge ; and the knowledge of the so- 
cial organisation of humanity is a vast and perplexing science. 
The race, like every one of us, is dependent on the laws of life, 
and the study of life is a mighty field to master. But life has its 



41 8 PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE 

conditions in inert matter, of which chemical and physical laws 
give us the fixed and subtle limits. Lastly, our whole existence 
is dependent on the laws of the solar system wherein we dwell. 

This vast array of Law thus forms the condition and basis 
of human life ; and we can only live rightly in so far as we 
live in accordance with it. Thus knowledge, knowledge of 
the laws mathematical, astronomical, chemical, physical, 
biologic, social, moral, becomes for us not only compatible 
with Religion, but essential to Religion, a part of Religion, 
its foundation and Creed. To oppose or contrast Science 
and Religion would be, for a Positivist, as irrational as it 
would be in a Christian to oppose the Creeds and the Gospels 
to Christianity. With us Science is Religion, so far that it is 
the Intellectual aspect of Religion. And thus with us the 
first part of a religious training is a sound and rational educa- 
tion. The beginning of all service of Humanity is the know- 
ledge of the laws of the world which surrounds it, of the laws 
of its own nature. Enthusiasm for Humanity, worship of 
Humanity would be shallow sentiment or rank hypocrisy, if 
it did not imply unwearying efforts to know the Power we 
pretend to serve, to master those laws which reveal to us its 
Destiny, and to carry that knowledge into act. 

Not that this knowledge can ever remain a dry intellectual 
attainment. Religion, as Comte has said, consists of Three 
parts : a Belief, a Worship, and a Rule of life, of which all 
three are equal, and each as necessary as any other. To 
make Religion consist in Knowledge only, would be to make 
it end in scientific curiosity. To make it consist in Worship 
only, would make it end in affectation and sentimentality. 
To make it consist in a rule of life alone, would be to make it 
end in Pharisaism. True Religion is the combination of Be- 
lief, Worship, Discipline. Humanity demands from us the 
best of our brains, of our hearts, of our conduct. 






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is perhaps on this account the more interesting ; certainly the address 
is in a high and stimulating strain . . . and its frank admiration for the 
best in human genius is an invigorating tonic." — The Nation. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YOBK 



OCT 31 190? 



